


It Is A Basilisk Unto Mine Eye

by Smokeycut



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Basilisk AU, F/F, F/M, Gen, Revolution AU, Second Chance at Love, Slow Burn, rebels au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2019-11-18 02:02:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18111002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeycut/pseuds/Smokeycut
Summary: The Mutant Registration Act is law, and Sentinels are policing the country. Hope is slipping away, and Scott Summers has lost everything. But when you lose all that you have, when you hit rock bottom... You'll be willing to do whatever it takes to change the world.





	1. We All Wanna Change The World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MbqzDm1uCo
> 
> Chapter title reference: Revolution by The Beatles.

He woke with a start.

He always did, these days. Leaping upwards, eyes shut tight, in a cold sweat, crying out _someone’s_ name. It always changed, but tonight it was Alex’s. He grabbed at his head and squeezed, as if crushing his own skull would quiet the voices that were haunting him this night, and every night before, going back far longer than he could even remember. And as the rain drummed against his bedroom window, and as the wind whipped at the trees outside, and as the thunder clapped and boomed… Scott Summers cried. He cried, and he didn’t know how to make the pain in his heart stop. If only, if only, if only it would _stop_. 

He crawled his way out of bed, and opened the dresser without opening his eyes. He had done this routine often enough as a teenager, before he ever got his visor. He knew where he kept everything. It was all organized, not a single item out of place. Just in case. First drawer, second item from the left. A grey v-neck. At least, Jean said it was grey when she gave it to him on his twenty seventh birthday. The last one before she… 

He couldn’t think about them. Not Alex and certainly not Jean. Not if he wanted to function. Second drawer, furthest item to the right. A pair of jeans. Bottom drawer, dead center. Black briefs. Just behind them, black socks. He slid the drawers closed, and turned to face the closet on his right. Second hanger from the right. A black leather jacket, well worn. He dressed himself, then grabbed a pair of glasses off of the top of the dresser and put them on. Finally, he opened his eyes. The room came to him through a soft red filter, like it always did. Ruby quartz. The only way he could see the world without destroying whatever he saw. He opened the door, slowly, and slipped out of his bedroom and into the hallway.

The mansion was silent and dark. He glanced at the clock on the wall as he entered the kitchen, and saw that it wasn’t even midnight yet. Everyone else was in bed, no doubt. Except for Logan. Scott could see his cabin out through the kitchen’s bay window, the lights on inside it. He could make out Logan’s silhouette in the doorway of the cabin, before the door closed and even those lights shut off. He opened the fridge, and noted that Logan must have just taken the last of their beer. He could always go out to the cabin, and join him in drinking to numb the pain. But that was never something the two of them had been capable of doing. Close as they were, they had never quite made it to being drinking buddies. And he didn’t want to start now.

So he left out the front entrance of the studentless school, and he slipped his keys into the ignition of the sedan that once belonged to Alex. That now belonged to him. The engine rumbled to life, and he drove off to find a bar.

It felt like entering a different world, when he stepped inside. A small group of men shared a booth in the corner of the room, while another two humans sat at the far right side of the bar. He chose a seat closer to the center, in front of the bartender. He was a tall, well built man, with long blonde hair and a small beard. His only other notable feature being the baseball cap he wore. He was looking at the tv that hung above the bar, and Scott’s gaze followed his. 

It was set to the news. A woman, with bobbed black hair, bright blue eyes, and heavy makeup, was talking about politics. Maurette Leeds, it said her name was. 

“Today marks the one year anniversary of the passage of the Mutant Registration Act. Spearheaded by Senate Majority Leader Robert Kelly, the act has led to the registration of over one thousand Mutants in the past year.” 

She looked uncomfortable as she covered the subject. Stiff. She practically _spat_ the word “Mutant”, like she didn’t even want something so filthy on her tongue. 

“Can I have a beer, please?” Scott asked, looking over to the bartender. He nodded, and handed one to Scott. He started drinking the moment he had it in his hand. And still, the woman droned on.

“While the government’s zero tolerance policy for usage of Mutant powers was initially met with resistance and protests across the nation, it seems like most people have become content with the new status quo since then. Most likely due to the marked decrease in Mutant related crime.”

He asked for a second beer. And then, when that was finished, a third. And a fourth. 

“To mark the one year anniversary of the MRA’s passage, Trask Industries has announced a new wave of Sentinels, which will be rolled out for active use by the police immediately. The Mark IV Sentinels are stated to be equipped with even greater Mutant tracking and hunting capabilities.”

A man from the corner booth swaggered over to the bar, and leaned up against it, next to Scott. He stank like booze. Then again, so did Scott. 

“Many expected the deployment of the Mark IV Sentinels to be delayed by the attack on Trask Industries last week by the infamous Mutant terrorist group known as the X-Men, but Bolivar Trask revealed that the attack actually ended in his favor, with the death of at least one Mutant criminal.”

There was a flash of white light, and a wave of scorching heat. Alex’s voice, screaming, and then nothing. Just ash on the ground. A pair of red lights in the sky, peering down at him. He roared, and tore his visor off. Poured everything he had onto the monstrosity until it crumbled. 

“Good riddance,” the man said with a drunken laugh. “Fuck the Muties. Let ‘em all die, see who gives a shit.”

They had nothing of him left to bury. Logan and Ororo had to grab Scott and tear him away from the scene, before he died too. They buried an empty casket. Just like when they buried Jean. He lost track of how many bottles he had downed. 

“The new wave of Sentinels are projected to ensure the continued registration of all Mutants in the country, and the arrest of those who continue to use their powers in spite of the Mutant Registration Act. But in a joint statement, Trask and Kelly assured Mutants that so long as they comply with the zero tolerance policy, they have nothing to worry about.”

Jean. The Shi’ar hadn’t even let him take her body back to Earth. Hadn’t even let him bury his fiance. They took her body to some vault. To lock it away, billions of miles from home. Another empty grave. Between Alex’s and Charles’.

“Can you… Can you please turn the tv off?” he asked, looking weakly at the bartender. He nodded, and went to hit the switch, when the other man protested.

“Nah, leave it on, leave it on.” He looked at Scott, suspicious, and leaned closer to him. “Why don’t you wanna hear this, man? Why… What’s your problem?” he slurred. He tilted his head, and poked Scott in the shoulder.

“You a fuckin’ Mutie lover?”

Scott turned, and looked at the drunk idiot. He didn’t even think. He was too tired to think. And far, far too drunk. And so, without thinking, he slugged the man in the face and knocked him out cold. And in the corner booth, the man’s friends started to stand up, and come closer…

“This is Maurette Leeds, signing off. Good night, and God bless.”

********************

She dialed the number, but her thumb hovered above the “call” button, frozen in place. 

It became a daily ritual, ever since Joanna had gotten home from Kuwait. Every evening, after she had made dinner but before she had eaten, she’d type in the number, but she could never bring herself to call. She didn’t know if the other end would even pick up. And if she did pick up, what would she say? Would she hang up the instant she heard her daughter’s voice? Would she call the police? The hotline for reporting unregistered Mutants? Would she call her a monster, a demon, a murderer? 

Was her mother even still _alive_? 

She gritted her teeth and fought back the tears. She shut off her phone and put it in her back pocket, then held her head in her hands as she leaned against the cheap apartment countertop. But no matter how hard she fought against them, the wet, hot tears fell from her eyes, and splashed onto the counter. She tried to stay calm, to shut the emotions down before they overwhelmed her. Before she broke something. 

She pushed herself away from the counter, and turned to take her stir fry off the stove. She sat down to eat, and turned on the news. The woman on CNN was going on and on and on about registration. About how the Mutants were going to be arrested or killed if they didn’t line up and tell the government all about who they are and what they’re able to do. They were handing out numbers, and she was expected to take one and _obey_ , like a _good_ little Mutie. She wasn’t going to. She’d _die_ before she’d ever let someone else control her. But, try as she might to pretend she was going to take on the powers that be, that she was going to stand her ground and _fight_ … She was still, at the end of the day, just a military washout sitting in her apartment and glaring at the news.

********************

She held the paperclip in her open hand, and with just a thought, she made it dance.

She had been collecting bits and pieces of metal for weeks, at school and at the supermarket and at home. Snatching up pens with metal casings, stealing staples out of the teachers’ staplers when they weren’t looking, exchanging her dollar bills for change… Until she had a display of metal objects surrounding her, on the floor of her bedroom. Her mom was watching the news in the other room, and her door was closed, so she knew she was safe to practice. To play. To make the metal dance in the air.

It felt good to reach out and feel it all. And she did feel it all. She couldn’t explain it, but every scrap of copper, steel, and aluminum could be felt without touching them. She only had to think at them, and they would bend to her will. She sent every other object in the pattern up into the air, and as they fell, she popped up the ones that had been left behind. Back and forth, over and over, watching them pop up and down, falling and rising past each other. Little toy cars and coins and ball bearings, all under her complete and total control. She furrowed her brow in concentration, and the trinkets began to dodge and weave around each other, whirling around and around and around her, like planets orbiting a star. And she _was_ a star. 

She couldn’t help but laugh with joy. She hated having to hide her gift, having to listen to kids at school talk about how disgusting Mutants were while she sat right there, pretending she wasn’t one of the genetic abnormalities that they wanted to hurt. But here, in the safety and privacy of her bedroom, she was able to be herself. She was able to be _free_.

“ _Nomi_?! What the _hell_ are you _doing_?!” The door to her room swung open, and her mother stood in the doorway. All of the metal dropped to the floor with a thud, and fear flashed across her young face.

********************

He watched the news, and fear gripped his heart.

“Has it really been a year?” He whispered, holding his head in his hand. His long chestnut hair hung over his face, and the coals of red light that were his irises burned dimly, as though even their fire was burning out.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it? How time ticks along, without a care for us and our kind?”

“Dey’re gonna kill us all, sooner or later…” He considered the glass in his hand, which contained only a few drops of whiskey at this point. The bottle on his table was empty, having been drained of its contents in the past few hours. He staggered over to the window of his dingy apartment and looked out at the stars that hung up above New Orleans. 

Remy LeBeau was at the end of his rope, and he was looking for something, anything, to give him a way out of the darkness. He hung his head and sighed deeply as the world spun around him. Too drunk to make sense of it all. Too drunk to crawl his way out of the dark hole he had found himself in.

“It’ll be okay, Remy,” his companion assured him, though he didn’t buy it one bit. “I assure you, you and I… Together, we’ll live to see the end of all this. We’re survivors. Stronger together than we are apart. You trust me, don’t you?”

Remy sighed again, and turned his eyes to the moon. He spoke softly, weakly, and resigned. “I hope you’re right…”

********************

She held a shining, silver tray in her hands, and tried her hardest not to melt it. 

The inner circle had gathered, and she was the only maid allowed in the room. She didn’t know why they trusted her above the others, but she tried her best to ignore what they were discussing. All of them, smiling coyly and talking about the new Sentinels like they were only programmed to hunt the _poor_ Mutants. The ones who didn’t have the clout to end up as members of the Hellfire Club. Then again, for all she knew, that was _exactly_ the case. The White Queen certainly had the money to pay off Trask Industries to hide her unique genetic signature from their tracking programs. 

And here she stood, in an opulent club that was furnished as though they were living in eighteenth century France. Gold and silver and pearl as far as the eye could see. Even the tray she held was made of pure silver. Serving tea to a group of women and men in lavish clothing from the same era. A maid, doting on kings and queens. The White Queen was fanning herself and tittering at the White King’s remark about how he didn’t find Sentinels frightening in the least. No shit, Angel thought. He wasn’t even a Mutant. 

She had been watching the news closely, ever since the MRA passed in her first year of college. It was the same year she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The same year that her grandmother had died. The same year that Emma Frost came along and offered to protect her, to teach her how to use her powers safely, to avoid ending up in prison like all the Mutants who were caught using their abilities in public. 

She reminded herself that she was only doing what she had to do to survive. One year into this hellish nightmare where giant robots rounded up people like her and shoved them into “detention centers”. A fancy way to refer to an internment camp, which held innocent people who simply couldn’t control their abilities. Or who had been born with abilities that were tied to them in a way that could never be suppressed. She thanked God that she wasn’t born with scales or fur or a tail. But she felt so much sorrow for those less fortunate. 

The White Queen snapped her fingers, and Angelica snapped to attention. She poured the woman, her Mistress, another cup of tea, and stayed silent as the conversation resumed. Fear gripped her heart, as it had for a full year now. Too afraid to even keep the tea warm with her gift, lest someone report her for illegal usage of Mutant powers. She was like a bird in a cage. A phoenix that wasn’t even allowed to rise from her ashes.

She swallowed her emotions, and poured another cup of tea.

********************

Scott slumped against the door to Logan’s cabin and knocked on it with the back of his fist. He nearly collapsed inside when the door swung open, and was only saved from greeting the wooden floor by Logan catching him and leading him to the sofa. Scott leaned back and rested his head on the back of the couch, as Logan stood across from him, his burly, hairy arms crossed in front of his chest, a glass of iced tea resting on the table in front of him.

“What the hell happened, Summers?” He asked. His voice was as gruff as ever, but it carried a twinge of sympathy, and of worry.

Scott didn’t look at him, and he didn’t acknowledge the bruises that covered his face and chest. The blood on his knuckles, and in his mouth. The cracked left lense of his glasses, which threatened to burst with concussive force if it cracked any further. Logan sighed, and took a sip of his iced tea before pressing on.

“How much trouble are we in?”

“The X-Men? None,” Scott said with a wry laugh. He winced, and clutched his ribs. “But me? A lot.”

“You gonna bring any Sentinels down on our heads, Slim?”

“No… No, I’ve got a plan,” Scott assured him.

“And what is this plan?”

Scott looked out the window, towards the manor’s grounds. Cicadas buzzed, and crickets chirped, but he said nothing. Not yet. He had a plan. One that would, most likely, get himself killed before the year was over. But he was going to follow it to the end. He found himself humming a tune. An old one, that he remembered Charles being a fan of, before his death. His lips parted, and he sang softly to himself.

“ _You say you want a revolution_ …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this works as a teaser for what's to come! I've kinda fallen in love with the idea of Scott as a revolutionary, and with his Basilisk persona from Age of X. So, this is going to be my attempt at creating an AU that combines revolutionary leader Scott with Basilisk. It's also going to be set outside of any canon continuity. It'll pull elements from stuff, like Jean dying after becoming Dark Phoenix, but there's a lot that doesn't line up with canon, and it's intentional. It's my own special little AU.
> 
> A big thanks to everyone from the Jay And Miles X-Plain The X-Men discord server! You were all a big help, not only in convincing me to write this, but also in nailing down which characters appear, bouncing ideas around, and providing feedback on some specific passages. This wouldn't even be up here if it weren't for all of you.


	2. Miss Atomic Bomb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! If you're still reading this, then cool! I love you! I'm happy you see enough in this concept to come back for more and to see where it goes!
> 
> Chapter song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffzsm8nRjHg

The bar had become her second home, over the past year. Fenris Tavern, in Montgomery, Alabama, that is. Joanna had been invited by a few folks from her support group, back when the MRA seemed like it was just a bigoted pipe-dream. Carol and Sam had dragged her along with them, told her it was a bar for vets like them. A place where they could gather, outside the support group, and talk about things besides how the war had fucked them up, but with people who still knew what it was like to be in a combat zone.

But she didn’t come to the bar with Carol and Sam anymore. Hadn’t seen either of them in months. She tried to drag herself to the support groups, after the law passed, but she felt stifled, in a way she hadn’t before. They were talking about PTSD, about the stressors that set them off. She could talk about how she reacted when woken up unexpectedly, or the nightmares she had most nights, but she couldn’t talk about the giant mechanical beasts that roamed the streets, and how they activated her fight or flight response. Not without outing herself as a Mutant. Not without telling a room full of vets that she was one of the freaks. That she hadn’t really been discharged for having contraband. That it was the military’s strict “no Mutants” policy, which had been in place far longer than she had even been alive. That when they saw the bullets bounce off of her chest, they saw her as a liability instead of an asset. 

So she stopped going to the support groups. But she couldn’t stay away from the bar. She moderated herself, she was never the sort to drink too much or too frequently. But she was the sort who became a notable fixture. Like John Proudstar, the Vietnam vet who tore through a pile of bar nuts every evening. Or Kevin Sydney, the guy who served in Desert Storm, and was usually passed out in the booth in the back corner of the room. They were nice guys. Nice enough, at least. John didn’t talk much to most people, but he talked to Joanna. 

“Hey, kid,” he mumbled around a peanut. There was already a sizable collection of shells in front of him at his place at the bar. His eyes flicked up to meet her as she walked through the door. His head was bobbing along slightly to the country music that was playing on the radio.

“You do know I’m 30 years old, right?” She grabbed the bar stool next to his and nodded at the bartender as he set down her usual beer. 

“Still a kid to me, kid.” He grunted, or chuckled. She could never tell which it was. But she smirked. The familiarity of it all put her at ease. The routine. Get off of work, head to the bar, and everyone who should be there is. Nothing was out of place or strange, and nothing set her off. A risk factor of zero. 

Her eyes drifted down to John’s wrist as he began to shell another peanut, and her smirk was replaced with a scowl. She saw the bracelet around his wrist. Blinking with green lights around a number etched into a steel tag. 

“You registered?” Joanna asked, her voice a low, harsh whisper. John looked at her slowly, and she saw how tired he was in his eyes. In the lines of his face. In the slump of his heavy shoulders. In his very essence. 

“Better than being a scorch mark in the street,” He muttered. He shook his head and popped the peanut in his mouth.

“Better to die free than live as a slave,” Joanna shot back, her voice rising ever so slightly. 

“This government already took everything my people had,” John whispered, defeat ringing clear in his weary voice. “All I’ve got left is my life.”

She opened her mouth to continue the debate, only to notice another face at the bar. This one unfamiliar. A white man, around her age, in a blue and yellow hoodie, with a NY Giants baseball cap pulled low to cover his face. He scratched at his beard, all short and brown and clearly still new to him. He wasn’t used to growing it out, so it itched. And he was looking at her. Watching her argue with John. And when her gaze turned to him, he stood, and moved to the seat on the other side of her from John’s. 

Joanna tracked him, fists clenched and preparing for a fight if he tried anything. The brown haired man didn’t say anything at first, not until it became clear that Joanna was waiting for him to speak up. Until then, she turned her attention back to John, and prepared herself to defend the older man if need be. His strength and durability, while far greater than a baseline human’s, were much weaker than her own. Whether it was a matter of age or nature, it didn’t really matter to her. But keeping her own safe did.

“Joanna, right?” The brown haired man said. His voice was stiff, like he had prepared every word a week in advance. He held himself just at rigidly. 

“Yeah? How’d you know?” She was on edge, on guard, prepared to shatter her beer bottle on his face if he tried anything. An exit strategy was already forming in her head.

“Kevin told me about you,” He said, turning to look at Kevin, passed out in his usual booth. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Joanna relaxed, only slightly, and regarded the man again. There was no alcohol on his breath, even though he had been there longer than her. His glasses, tinted red with thin metal frames, were pushed up to cover his eyes entirely. Coupled with the hoodie and the baseball cap, it was more than clear he was hiding from someone. 

“You AWOL?” She asked, her voice low. 

“In a way, yes.”

“In a way?”

“Let’s just say that I’m not the most beloved man in the country right now.” He looked at her through those sunglasses, and she had no idea whether he was looking at her, John, or the bartender, who was now at the other end of the bar. 

“Are you even a vet?”

“A veteran? Yes. A veteran of the US military? No.”

“Then what the hell kinda war did you fight in?” Her voice deepened, became sharper, harsher, taking on the same tone it did when she saw John’s Mutant ID bracelet.

“The one that’s still going on,” He told her, with a hint of a smirk. “And I’m recruiting.”

Joanna glanced back at John, who was looking down at his bar nuts with a pained look in his eyes. She looked at Kevin, still sleeping off his booze. She looked at the man in the red sunglasses, and clenched her jaw tight.

“Let’s talk back at my place.”

The man smiled.

********************

“Alright, explain,” Joanna demanded, as she shut the door of her apartment behind them. The man took a look around, then turned to look at her. He was the very definition of a string bean, when applied to a human being. Tall, lanky, and too thin for someone of his height. But he carried himself like her. Like a soldier. Rigid, and yet weary. Tired from loss. He dressed like he was trying to look normal, but he wasn’t sure how normal looked. Like he was uncomfortable in his own clothes.

And behind the ruby red lenses of his glasses, there was a dangerous, yet alluring, red glow. 

“Do you have your phone on you right now?” He asked, his voice low, and still as structured as in the bar.

“Yeah? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Put it in another room. In a drawer or under a pillow or something.”

“You’re really into some kinda covert ops, huh?” She shook her head, but did as he requested. She walked to her bedroom and tucked her cellphone under her pillow, then came back to find him standing in the exact same spot, holding the exact same position. 

“Any other recording devices? You don’t own an Echo, do you?”

“No. Now, you gonna tell me why you don’t want anyone listening in on this conversation?” Joanna asked, taking a step closer to him. As tall as he was, he still had to look up in order to meet her eye. And she wanted him to know that. 

“My name is Scott Summers. I am a wanted fugitive. I am an unregistered Mutant. Until last week, I was a member of the X-Men.”

“You’re Cyclops…” The realization sank in, and she felt like a moron for not connecting the dots back at the bar. The glasses. The damn glasses were a dead giveaway. She put on hand on her hip, and the other held her forehead. “Shit. Of course you are.”

The smallest hint of a smile graced his face, but vanished as quickly as it came. Despite being a fugitive from the law, he really looked like a fed. 

“Do you watch the news, Ms. Cargill?”

“I try not to… But yeah. Yeah I do.” She glanced at her television with a sneer, thinking of the most recent news reports on Mutants and the supposed menace they posed to society. 

“Then I’m sure you know about the Mutants that are being forced to register, or locked up in camps, or… Or killed. Executed.”

“Murdered, more like.”

He nodded stiffly. “Murdered.”

Joanna sighed, and crossed her arms. “So why are you coming to me?”

“Because I want to do something about it.” He looked at her, and she saw the danger behind his glasses humming louder. Angrier. And he continued.

“I have spent the past year watching as my people are rounded up and killed. No doubt tortured. Even longer, I have tried, tried and failed, to show humans that Mutants pose no threat to them. I fought alongside the X-Men. I led the X-Men. And no matter how often we protected humanity and their government, that very same government, those very same people… They keep trying to kill us. And I have watched them kill my own family.”

He looked down, and he swallowed. Tried to calm his racing heart. His face, still, betrayed little emotion. But she could hear it choking his voice. The pain. The loss. The weariness. He pushed his glasses up and clenched his fists. He spoke again, in a voice hardly above a whisper.

“I am tired, Ms. Cargill, of watching my people die. This country has betrayed us. So I think that it’s time for us betray our country. I think it’s time we take it back, for Mutantkind.”

She looked at him for a moment, and then snorted. He cocked an eyebrow in confusion.

“This ain’t our country anymore, string bean. They made that clear last year. We wouldn’t be betraying anybody.” Her voice began to shift, leaning in to a growl. “But you’re talking about going all Brotherhood of Mutants on the world. Taking on ONE. The whole fucking military. Fighting god damned Sentinels. Magneto couldn’t do it, but you think _you_ can?”

“I don’t know if I can, Ms. Cargill. But _we_ have to try.”

“Shit…”

Scott watched as Joanna leaned against her kitchen table. No doubt, if she put her full weight on it, it would break like it was nothing. She did, in fact, stand notably taller than him. She had a good five inches on his six foot build, and she was built like a tank. Even without her mutation, she looked like she was strong enough to go toe-to-toe with a heavyweight boxing champ for ten rounds and come out on top. Her dark brown dreads were pulled back into a ponytail, and her dog tags hung from her neck on a small chain. She looked like a soldier, to the very core. She spoke with a husky, smooth voice. A twinge of a southern drawl snuck in through with the words. And he could practically feel the righteous fury that was boiling inside her. Threatening to explode. 

And he wanted her to explode. 

“Would you rather register?” He asked quietly. “Would you rather end up in a camp? Or killed by a Sentinel, and forgotten? Or would you rather stand up and fight? What is it you said back at the bar? Better to live free… Than to die a slave?”

She looked him dead in the eye, and he could see the explosion. 

“What’s this little outfit of yours called, anyways?”

He smiled. That little, quick flash of a smile.

“The Mutant Liberation Front.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, don't forget to kudos and comment!


	3. Suck A Dick, America

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again! I'm trying to push out these early chapters faster than usual, so that we can get to the part where this whole team comes together, so I hope you're ready for more! Enjoy!

Scott stood outside a diner called Jay’s. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat, but clenched his jaw and prepared to activate his visor at a moment’s notice. It was coming up any minute now. He could feel it. The comms he had stolen from Hank’s lab were barely functioning, but he tried to work through the crackling static to relay a message to Joanna.

“Police report says she’s wearing a blue hoodie, black leggings, and a white skirt. Bright blue hair, too.”

He winced as the comms whined at a high pitch, then settled down. Joanna’s voice filtered through, sounding as though she was miles away. 

“Wouldn’t she have thought to ditch those clothes by now? Dyed her hair?”

“She’s thirteen.”

“...Hoodie, leggings, skirt. Got it.”

Scott fell quiet, and he waited. And waited. And waited. And after several more minutes had passed, he heard the telltale siren of a police car, and saw the flashing blue and red lights coming down the street. The comm began to whine again, and so he ripped it out and dropped it in the trash as the car pulled up to the curb near him. Two well-armed officers clambered on out, and Scott tensed up. One of his hands reached up towards his visor, but to his surprise, they didn’t even notice him. They weren’t there for him. 

His gaze turned to the inside of the diner, and the first thought that ran through his mind was that he must have been an idiot. He had painstakingly scoped out every last street in the zipcode, and he didn’t even check inside the damn diner. But there she was, visible right through the window. 

He watched in silence as she noticed the police. The color drained from her face, and she dropped her burger onto the plate. She stood, and began to back away in fear as the police aimed their guns right at her. The other patrons of the diner began to scream, and shoot up in horror at the scene that was unfolding before their eyes. Before Scott had a chance to react, the girl threw up her hands.

As her hands went up, so did every metal object in the building. Silverware, the cash register, even purses with metal chains. And all at once, they came together, bashing the cops with enough force to distract them and give the girl a chance to run. And as she looked for an exit, Scott provided one by shooting the glass window with an optic blast. The glass splintered and flooded inwards, and she didn’t hesitate before leaping out onto the sidewalk. 

“My name is Scott Su-”

Before he had a chance to finish, she had bolted right past him and down the street. Scott sighed in frustration and chased after her, as the police ran out of the building and chased after him. 

He glanced backwards and fired a warning shot, hitting the ground at their feet. They didn’t stop. He blasted their guns out of their hands, and they stopped to pick them back up. One of them said something into their radio, but he was too far ahead to hear it. He looked ahead, just in time to see the girl duck into an alley. He smiled at his luck, and followed after her. 

He turned the corner to find Joanna blocking the girl’s path. How fortunate for them that their target had picked the exact alley that Joanna had picked as _her_ stakeout position. She had grabbed the girl by her hoodie and lifted her up into the air, where she was flailing wildly and spitting out a startling stream of foul language. He was impressed. 

“Quiet, kid!” Joanna growled. The girl fell silent, but then spat one last insult.

“Fuck you, fascist.”

“We’re not the fascists here,” Scott said, stepping closer. “We’re Mutants. Like you. And we are _trying_ to help you get away from the _real_ fascists.”

Her eyes went wide as she noticed his visor, and she broke into a grin. “You’re Cyclops, aren’t you? _You’re_ the one who exploded the window?!”

“Yes, I am. And we need to get you out of here, fast.” He glanced towards the entrance to the alley, and breathed a sigh of relief as the cops ran past their position. “We need to get in the car and get out of here. Come on, let’s hurry.”

“I’m not too worried, honestly,” Joanna said, setting the girl on the ground. She kept a hand on her shoulder, just to make sure she didn’t try to split. “Between the two of us, we can take some cops no problem.”

“We’re not bullet proof.” Scott checked the alley’s entrance again.

“I am.”

He looked back at Joanna, and for some reason, began to genuinely consider the merits of taking on the entire Baltimore PD together. He hadn’t fought cops, seriously fought cops, since he was a teenager. When he and Jean were on their first date. When they had-

**”HALT. MUTANTS IDENTIFIED.”**

All three of them felt a chill run down their spines, and the color drained from their faces. Fear, pure and distilled _terror_ , flooded their bodies. A shadow loomed over them, and they could hear the sounds of metal grinding against metal. They turned their gazes skyward to see the cold, emotionless, almost childlike face of a Sentinel staring down at them. It raised a hand, and a long, snake-like, steel tendril slithered out…

********************

**Five hours earlier.**

Scott sat in the front seat of the car, with Joanna in the passenger seat. Baltimore was spread out before them, as they parked in a lot not far from the stakeout point. 

“So, who’re we picking up here, exactly?” She asked pointedly, as she tied her dreadlocks back into a low ponytail. 

“Nomi Mara Blume. She’s a magnokinetic, like Magneto.”

“Wait, you mean the girl from the news? Shit,” Joanna said, impressed. 

Neither one of them had to clarify any further beyond that. Everyone in America who still watched the news had heard of Nomi Blume. They were calling her the next Magneto. The newest name in Mutant terrorism. What they _didn’t_ say was that she had been apprehended by ONE after her own mother called their hotline to report her daughter. They didn’t tell people that she was only thirteen years old, or that her favorite color was electric blue, or that she had been a girl scout. Instead, they just talked about how she had become the first Mutant in history to break _herself_ out of ONE’s custody. And for the past two weeks, she had managed to avoid being recaptured. Those facts, coupled with the coincidence that she shared her powers with the leader of The Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy, made her the most feared girl in America.

“You sure you want to bring a kid into this, though?” Joanna asked, looking at Scott with a furrowed brow. “We’re talking war. _Revolutionary_ war. She’s just a kid.”

“I’ve been fighting this war since I was a teenager. So have all my closest friends. Humans aren’t waiting until she turns eighteen, so neither will we,” Scott countered. That was enough for Joanna, so she simply nodded in affirmation and cracked her knuckles. 

“Long as I get to bust some heads, I’m down,” She said, thinking back to the night she first used her own powers. He was right. She knew that from experience. The world didn’t care about a Mutant’s age. It only cared that they were a Mutant. 

But Scott’s thoughts were elsewhere. He looked out the car window, into the blue sky up above, and wondered if they would even be able to get Nomi out of Baltimore. Or would he face the same fate as Alex? Turned into a black scorch mark on the ground, without even a trace of a body left behind? The skies looked clear, but… But he could never be sure of his own safety. Not in the world they lived in.

********************

Three sets of eyes gazed up at the Sentinel and three hearts began to pound rapidly, like drums on a battlefield. The steel tendril snaked out of its metallic purple hand and wrapped around Scott’s torso. Joanna began to shout. Nomi backed up against the brick wall of a building. Scott raised his hand to his visor, and unleashed hell. 

Red light poured onto the Sentinel, right in the crook between its upper arm and forearm. The joint began to bend, and to weaken, as metal was ground down, bombarded with pure force. But as Scott was pulled into its cold, crushing grip, he had no choice but to release the button on his visor, and the concussive force barrage ceased. 

Looking into its eyes, he thought again of Alex, and of Jean. He had expected it to all end like this, though not quite so soon. He could practically smell the burning flesh, from the night he watched his little brother die. He tried to squirm out of its grip, just enough so that he could activate his visor again, but there was no hope of escape. Not alone. 

Thankfully, he wasn’t alone. 

There was a wrenching noise, like the swing of a collapsing ferris wheel, as the Sentinel’s left leg buckled, and it fell to its knee. It was then that Scott saw Joanna, holding a crumpled mass of wire, cable, and metal in her hands, ripped right out of the machine’s leg. She roared, like a lioness, and hurled the ball of steel into the Sentinel’s unmoving face. Scott watched, in awe, as she leapt up onto the monstrosity’s kneecap and punched it in the stomach. The metal dented, and with another punch was punctured. The Sentinel’s grip began to weaken, and Scott pulled an arm free from its grasp. 

“Keep hitting it!” He shouted, as he poured on another steady blast of concussive force. All the while, he kept directing his allies. “Go for the joints! With any luck, we can break it apart. Nomi, I want you to get somewhere safe. Hit it from a distance!”

“Screw that,” The young runaway muttered to herself. She pushed out her hands, palms facing the Sentinel, and began to raise her arms, slowly. As they were lifted, so too was the Sentinel. Up, off the ground, and into the air. Turning her hands away from each other, she began to pull the machine apart, right down the middle. Nuts and bolts shook and rattled, cables snapped, and panels were flung off and out into the streets. Finally, with a loud, metallic groan, its arms were torn from its torso, and dropped to the ground. Lifeless. Inert. Dead. 

Scott was free, but the head kept talking. 

**”CEASE RESISTANCE. SUBMIT, MUTANTS. SUBMIT, MUTANTS. SUBMIT, MUTA-”**

Joanna climbed up onto its chest and buried her fist in the death machine’s face, crushing its CPU and shutting it up for good. With a sickening crunch, it fell to the ground, and its lights dimmed, before blinking out entirely. Scott looked to the mouth of the alley, just as the two police officers entered it, and blasted them hard enough to knock them out. 

“Suck a dick, mom…” Nomi mumbled, before collapsing to the ground, unconscious. 

Scott’s attention turned to the fallen girl, while Joanna delivered one final kick to the Sentinel’s broken face. Scott rolled Nomi over, onto her back, and checked her pulse. She was still breathing, and steadily at that. She was, from the look of things, perfectly fine, save for a bloody nose. He smiled softly to himself. It wasn’t the first time that a young Mutant had pushed themselves to the edge of their abilities, and paid the price in the form of a fainting spell. Odds are it wouldn’t be the last, either. But she would be just fine, so long as they got her away before any more police arrived. 

“Come on, let’s get her to the car,” Scott urged Joanna. She hoisted Nomi up and over her shoulder, and headed for the other end of the alley, where her car was parked. She put Nomi in the back seat, then climbed into the driver’s seat while Scott sat beside her. 

She put the car in drive, and drove off. The entire ride out of the city, Scott found himself watching for any sign of police catching on to them. He was counting on luck, and luck had never helped him before. But as the minutes passed on by, and the police ran in circles trying to find Cyclops and a girl with blue hair, they ignored the car driven by Joanna Cargill and a random man with red sunglasses.

But still, it wasn’t until they reached Hanover, to the south, that he let his guard down even a little. He looked into the back seat and saw Nomi sitting up straight, wiping the now dried blood from her face and sneering at it in disgust. 

“Gross,” She muttered, flicking it away. She looked up at Scott and furrowed her brow as she thought. “Are you taking me to live with the X-Men?” She asked.

“If you want. But that isn’t what I had in mind,” He told her. 

“Wait, don’t the X-Men have a jet?”

“Yes. They do.”

“Then why are we in this lady’s car?”

“Because we’re _not_ the X-Men,” He explained with a frustrated sigh. 

Nomi scoffed. “What, did they fire you or something?”

“Kid, just shut up and let the man speak,” Joanna cut in, shooting Nomi a glare powerful enough to make her listen.

“Thanks, Joanna.” Scott looked straight at Nomi and explained. “The X-Men aren’t effective. They’re trying to plug a leaking dam, and it’s not working. I can take you up to live with them, if that’s what you really want, but I had something else in mind. Something that, I think, might suit you better.”

“And what’s that?”

“It’s what we just did, Nomi. Fighting ONE, and the Sentinels, directly. Bringing the fight _to_ them, instead of avoiding it. Breaking people out of lockup, giving them the means to fight back, and lighting the fires of revolution. Burning down the factories that create those machines, one by one, until they can’t kill us anymore. Being ruthless. Using the methods that will _make_ humans stop killing us. _That_ is what I had in mind.”

Nomi looked at Joanna, and then back at Scott, and a smile began to form on her face. A blood stained bullet, stolen from one of the several ONE soldiers she had fought in order to escape captivity, floated out of the pocket of her hoodie, and began to spin in the palm of her hand. 

“Suck a dick, America.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, don't forget to leave kudos and comments! Comments help me know how you all feel about this fic, and the direction its taking!


	4. Devious Stares In My Direction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KT-r2vHeMM

“So, why are you going around getting a bunch of random Mutants to help you out, again?” Nomi asked Scott. She sat atop the trunk of Joanna’s car as Scott filled the gas tank, kicking her legs back and forth lazily and twirling a paperclip in the palm of her hand. The summer breeze blew gently on them all, easing the heat in the southern air.

“As opposed to what?” Scott looked at her, waiting for the tank to fill up.

“The X-Men? The _Brotherhood_? Why are we picking up a bunch of nobodies?”

“You _are_ one of those nobodies, kid,” Joanna shot at her from her position in the driver’s seat. Nomi rolled her eyes and looked back to Scott, expecting an answer.

“I already tried to get the X-Men to agree with this plan,” He explained. He sighed, and hung up the hose. “None of them were on board. Not even Wolverine. They wanted to stick to Xavier’s way of doing things. Focus on protecting the humans, and showing them we aren’t out to hurt anyone. After our raid on that Sentinel factory, they won’t even go after Trask anymore. They’re too afraid of retaliation.”

“And the Brotherhood? Why the hell isn’t Magneto helping us?” Nomi complained.

“Because nobody has seen Magneto in months,” Joanna told her. 

“Exactly. But trust me, we’re not in New Orleans for a nobody.”

“Who then?” Nomi and Joanna asked in unison. They shot each other a brief glare, then looked back at Scott.

“His name is Shiro Yoshida. He used to go by Sunfire,” Scott said with a slight smile. He was looking forward to seeing an old friend again, after how long it had been since their last encounter. “He used to be a member of the X-Men, but he left several years back.”

“Wait, seriously?!” Nomi shot up straight and kicked herself off of the back of the car. “I saw a youtube video of that guy! He’s like Pyro, but _better_! Why’d he quit?”

“He didn’t exactly gel with the rest of the team. He was never the kind to follow orders. But I could care less about that these days. And besides, I called him up in advance and he agreed to join. We’re just going down here to pick him up.”

“I wonder if he’ll teach me how to fly,” Nomi muttered to herself as she climbed back into the car’s back seat. It would be several more minutes before she remembered that Magneto didn’t actually fly, so much as he levitated his own armor.

Now that they were in New Orleans, it didn’t take them too long to reach the Yoshidas’ address. There was a young girl on the front lawn, playing with an older man. His black hair was just beginning to turn grey, at the temples, and his age showed around the eyes in the form of deep crows’ feet. He paused when he noticed the car pulling up the street, and his daughter’s baseball bounced off of his chest and rolled onto the grass.

“Aimi, go on inside,” He told her. She looked at him, confused, but a stern look from her father is all it took for the gravity of the situation to sink in. The car pulled into the driveway, and Shiro Yoshida let loose a deep sigh. His grey eyes hardened as Scott Summers stepped out of the car and onto the lawn. 

“Shiro. It’s good to see you again,” Scott said as he extended his hand and shook Shiro’s own.

“You seem to be in poorer company these days.” Shiro eyed Joanna and Nomi with thinly veiled judgement as they joined Scott on the front lawn of the Yoshida household. “Did the X-Men kick you out when you revealed your inclinations towards extremism?”

Nomi snickered, and Joanna elbowed her in the ribs. Scott sighed. “I’m putting together a team, Shiro. Just like I told you. And believe me, they’re capable. They took down a Sentinel with hardly any help from me.”

Shiro snorted, and glanced to the window, where his daughter and wife were watching from. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t invite you in to meet my family. Yuriko isn’t happy about my decision to rejoin this fight.”

“Yuriko isn’t a Mutant.”

“Somedays, I wish I wasn’t either,” Shiro stated as a matter-of-fact. He had never been shy about admitting his contempt for their people, or their struggle against humanity. The day they first met, to plan the assault on Krakoa, Shiro had said as much. But Scott knew that deep down, there was a part of Shiro Yoshida that couldn’t stand to see Mutants victimized. And _that_ was what he was here for. _That_ was Sunfire.

“You said you’d be a part of this, Shiro. You made a promise,” Scott said. He looked at Shiro, and he could see the man’s resolve wavering. “What did you say to me on the phone, back when I called you from Westchester?”

Shiro sighed, and scratched at his neck. “...I want a world where Aimee can live without fear of who she is, of what she can do.”

“So are you in?” Joanna asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Or are we wasting our time here?”

“You will have Sunfire’s aid,” He told them, with a bitter twist in his voice. “Meet me back here tonight. After I have said goodbye to my family. They deserve one last day with me in their lives, before I return to this fight of ours.”

Scott nodded his head, and looked at Shiro’s wife and daughter, still watching the conversation with rapt interest, and worry. “I promise, Shiro. You’ll get to see your family again once this is all over.”

Shiro knelt down and picked up Aimee’s baseball, and turned it in his hand. The dirty, worn leather was comforting to touch. It reminded him of peaceful days. His eyes softened as he saw Aimee run out of the house to ask him who those strangers were. He hugged his daughter tight and sighed. He hoped Scott was right.

********************

Remy LeBeau grinned with eager delight as he spotted three figures stand outside of a motel. The sun was beginning to dip beneath the clouds, and brushes of pink and orange appeared on the blue canvas up above. He turned a deck of playing cards in his hands, shuffling them absentmindedly as he watched his marks go about their business. 

The man, a tall, slim brown haired individual with red sunglasses and a blue button down shirt, was talking to a young girl with long blue hair and a baggy white t-shirt over black shorts. The girl was staring at a soda vending machine with an intense, determined look on her face. Her fingers were twitching, and she chewed on the bottom of her lip. After several minutes, a can of sprite dropped down into the bottom of the machine, without a single cent being spent on it.

“Good job,” The brown haired man said as he clapped the girl on her back. It was an intensely awkward gesture, like he was trying to behave as he had seen others behave when coaching a student, but was unsure of his own actions. But despite that, the girl basked in the praise. 

“Grab me a pepsi, will you?” The third person, a tall, dreadlocked woman in an olive green tank top and jean shorts, asked, as she opened the door of their motel room, and tossed a duffel bag inside. The girl grinned, and focused on the machine once again. 

As she worked on releasing another can of soda, Remy sprang into action. He turned up the collar on his ratty old jacket and walked through the party of three, slipping between them with a mumbled “Sorry, comin’ through.” And while they paid him no mind, he liberated the man and the woman’s wallets, and slipped them into his jacket pocket. He flashed a smug grin as he came out the other side, but it quickly turned to an expression of regret as someone grabbed him by the back of his coat.

The woman stared daggers at him as she shoved him up against the vending machine. Remy winced, and raised his hands to show he meant no harm. She caught sight of his eyes, and faltered for a moment, before pushing him into the machine again. A can of pepsi rattled to the slot with a thunk, and Remy smiled guiltily. 

“Give them back,” She demanded. Remy opened his mouth to protest his innocence, but she raised a fist, and he knew right then that it wasn’t worth it. He pulled the wallets out of his coat and handed them over. But still, Joanna kept him pinned to the machine.

“Look, chere, Remy didn’ mean nothin’ by it…”

“Shove it, cajun,” She growled. Her gaze flicked towards his eyes again, and she clenched her jaw. “You’re a Mutant, aren’t you?”

“Naw, Remy ain’t no Mutant, chere,” He lied.

“Does he have brain damage?” Nomi wondered aloud. “He keeps talking in the third person. It’s really annoying.”

“Let’s avoid bringing up brain damage, Nomi,” Scott sighed. He’d have to have a talk with her later about avoiding sore subjects like that one. After they had wrapped things up with their little thief, that was.

“Tell me the truth and I’ll let you down, cajun,” Joanna told him, lifting him another inch up off the ground. “Are you a Mutant?”

Remy grinned, and his eyes began to burn brighter. The red of his iris flared, and the machine behind him began to glow a vibrant, neon purple. 

“Chere, why don’ I jus’ show ya?”

Joanna’s eyes went wide, as she realized what was about to happen. She dropped Remy, and turned her back on him as she shielded Scott and Nomi from the burst of kinetic energy that exploded out of the vending machine. Nomi screamed, and Scott froze up, but Joanna turned back in time to push her car into the fleeing thief. He fell backwards, onto the hood, where she grabbed him again. This time, she threw him on the ground and planted a boot firmly on his chest. Unless he blew up the ground beneath himself, he had nowhere to run. She could see it in his eyes that he understood he was cornered, with no way out. 

“That answers that, then.”

“Ya got me, chere,” Remy said with a laugh. “Now, why don’ we jus’ let bygones be bygones, yeah? I go my way, you three go your’s, we all walk away happy, yeah?”

“ _Bullshit_ we walk away happy,” Joanna growled. “You just blew up a damn vending machine. ONE is gonna be on our ass any minute because of you!”

“Wait, wha?” Remy looked from Joanna to Scott to Nomi, and back to Joanna. The red glasses, the blue hair, the almost superhuman physique… It clicked together all at once, and he broke out into the first genuine smile any of them had seen from the man. “You’re Mutants too?”

“We’re fucked,” Nomi complained, throwing up her hands and dramatically walking around to the other side of the car. She made a show of climbing into the backseat and pounding her head into the headrest of the driver’s seat. 

“Look, let’s all just keep a cool head,” Scott said, speaking up and taking charge of the situation, as though he hadn’t locked up in a panic just moments before. “Look, Remy, you said your name was? Remy. We’re here to recruit Mutants to our cause. And with the power you’ve just displayed, you’d be an asset to this team.”

“And what is ‘dis cause, eh?” He asked, as Joanna eased up on his chest just a hair. 

“We’re fighting back, fool,” Joanna said with a sneer. 

“Taking the fight right to ONE’s doorstep. To Trask Industries. To the politicians who signed off on the MRA, if it comes to that,” Scott explained. “I can assure you, it’d be a much better use of your gift than petty theft. What do you say?”

Remy looked between the two Mutants who stood above him, and he knew that he didn’t really have much of a choice at all. He cracked another grin, and extended a hand to the man who was currently offering him a brand new opportunity. 

“You got yourself a deal, boss. Ain’t like I got nothin’ better to do anyhow.”

Scott nodded to Joanna, and she lifted her boot off of Remy’s chest. Scott pulled the thief to his feet, and their eyes met for a moment. Scott couldn’t help but notice the man’s eyes. Pitch black sclera, with irises that burned like dim, red coals. He wondered to himself if that was what his own eyes looked like, beneath the beams of concussive force. That was a mystery that only Jean had known the answer to, he supposed. He pushed the memories of that night down, beneath the surface of his thoughts, and focused on the matter at hand. Jean was gone, now. But these people were here, and he needed to lead them.

“We have to go meet back up with Shiro,” He said. “Remy, hop in the back with Nomi. I hope Shiro doesn’t mind fitting in between the two of you.” He knew, of course, that Shiro would rather kill himself. But thankfully, Sunfire could fly, even if he’d complain about it all the while.

The drive back to the Yoshida residence was quiet, in spite of Scott’s expectations. Joanna kept her eyes on Remy in the mirror, while Scott’s thoughts drifted back to the night that Jean, as Phoenix, suppressed his powers and looked into his eyes for the first and only time. Nomi was listening to music on her headphones and practicing her gift by toying with a pile of coins. Remy, their unexpected guest, simply leaned back and smiled to himself, enjoying the ride and the company.

Remy opened his eyes, and he saw Joanna staring at him through the mirror. The scruffy cajun flashed her a smile, and her scowl deepened. There was something about him that she didn’t, couldn’t, trust. But within the next few hours to come, he would go on to prove himself more than trustworthy to his new compatriots. Until that time came, however, she kept her eyes on the shifty Mutant, and he understood that it would take quite a bit of effort to win her over.

One by one, however, their attentions turned away from the thoughts in their heads, and towards the Yoshida house as they came down the street. The sky had darkened, turning to a purplish hue. But they also saw flashing blues and reds down the street. Sirens, ringing out in the night. And seeing them, Scott’s face fell.

“Oh no…” He whispered. 

Joanna didn’t hesitate before throwing open her door and running towards the arriving police cars. Nomi was right behind her, wishing with all her heart that she’d get to show off by destroying her second Sentinel in a week. Remy and Scott climbed out of the car and exchanged a worried glance, before turning their attention to the large black van with the letters O.N.E. painted on the side in bold white letters. Only a few meters away was a different van, one that was bright white, with a news crew already filming in preparation for the arrest of an unregistered Mutant.

“Your friend in dat house?” Remy asked, as they walked closer to the scene. They could hear ONE agents shouting, demanding that Shiro Yoshida leave his house immediately. Another screamed at the top of his lungs at Joanna, demanding that she halt, as he aimed his machine gun at her chest.

As if to answer Remy’s question, a red hot figure shot through the roof of the Yoshida family’s home, and painted the night sky with a trail of blazing fire. It curved, and came to a stop in the air. The night was cool, even slightly chilly compared to the day that preceded it. But when the fiery figure revealed itself, the whole street was bathed in an intense wave of heat. Scott Summers clenched his jaw, and his fists, as he prepared for a fight. Remy LeBeau pulled a deck of cards from his jacket pocket and began to charge one with kinetic energy. Joanna Cargill cracked her neck and glared at the ONE agent who had spotted her. Nomi Blume raised her hands, and prepared to stop the bullets that would surely begin to fly at any second.

And up above their heads, Sunfire stood alone. A burning star, hanging in the night sky. An X-Man reborn, and ready to rejoin the battle against a world that was filled with hate and fear for him and his kind. 

For a moment, the night was still, as all present parties sized each other up. And then, all at once, they began to fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, if you liked this, don't forget to kudos and comment!


	5. Help I'm Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoK63Bk7pgw

A bolt of fire arced through the sky, unleashing blasts of intense heat on the ONE soldiers below. It painted the night sky with ribbons of crimson and orange, as it weaved around, effortlessly dodging bullets fired from below. Scott had brought Joanna and Nomi to New Orleans to recruit Shiro Yoshida, formerly known as Sunfire. A fellow X-Man, who had retired years ago in order to start a family. But someone must have called ONE after they had met with him. And now Scott’s whole plan was going belly up, before it could even truly begin.

A beam of concussive energy shot through the night, from Scott’s visor to the chest of a soldier who had a bead on Sunfire. The black-clad soldier was knocked into the large van he and his comrades had arrived in, but two more jumped out the back and took his place. Another agent was firing round after round at Joanna, but the bullets bounced off like rubber, and did absolutely nothing to impede her. She charged at him with a roar, and tackled him into one of his friends, before slamming the both of them into a police car, leaving behind a massive dent. 

One of the police officers leapt out of the way of one of Sunfire’s fireballs, and saw Nomi standing next to Scott and Remy. The woman pulled her firearm and unloaded three bullets, but not one of them met their targets. They hung in the air, suspended between her and the trio of Mutants, before rocketing backwards and into the officer’s head. 

“Did you just murder a cop?!” Joanna shouted over the gunfire, as she tossed a ONE agent into the path of a fireball. 

“Is dis really de time to be teachin’ the little one morals, chere?” Remy asked as he threw a charged playing card at another police officer. A purple explosion covered the sight of his now-marred face. 

“Keep your minds on the mission, people,” Scott chided. Still, he couldn’t hide the smile on his face. It felt right to be back in the fight like this. To be striking back. Saving the life of a friend. It was like the old days, when he and the X-Men were fighting the good fight, and having the time of their lives doing it. 

They worked like a well oiled machine, without even having had any prior practice as a full team, or a telepath to link their minds. Sunfire was at it like he had never even left, destroying the vehicles of their attackers and keeping them from coordinating any strategies. Scott directed his allies on the ground, picking off the police and ONE, one or two at a time. Nomi caught any bullets in flight, while Joanna muscled her way through any of their tougher foes. 

Scott and Remy quickly found themselves pressed back-to-back, firing concussive beams and flinging exploding playing cards at anyone they could spot in the fire-lit night. 

“Dis is what we gon’ do every night, boss?” 

“More or less. That a problem?”

Remy pulled up a ONE agent’s helmet, stuck a card next to his face, and kicked him away.

“Hell naw.”

Inside the Yoshida household, however, the mood was anything but confident. Aimi Yoshida and her mother, Yuriko, cowered in their living room, in fear of the fight that raged on their street. Yuriko peeked out the window and watched with rapt attention as her husband lit a police car on fire. She had never seen this side of him before. She knew of his past, and of his power, but she had never seen him like _this_. She loved him, loved him dearly… But this frightened her. 

“Mom?” Aimi whispered, tugging on the sleeve of her mother’s dress. Yuriko looked to Aimi and wrapped her in her arms, shielding her instinctively. “Why are the police outside? Why is Dad attacking them?”

Yuriko said nothing. What could she say? What on Earth was she supposed to tell her daughter? That her father was a retired superhero, a former member of a team that the government had labelled terrorists? That he was planning to leave them that night, so he could go with these other Mutants, and try to start a damned revolution? She didn’t know what to believe herself. _Was_ he a terrorist? Or was he a hero? Did he have a good reason to leave them? Was _any_ reason good enough?

So Yuriko Yoshida said nothing. She hugged her daughter tight, prayed that the fighting would stop, and said nothing. 

And as the battle raged, and as Yuriko held her daughter, a young on the scene reporter by the name of Vicki Vale tried her best to describe what she was seeing to her cameraman, Jack. 

“I am on the scene in New Orleans, as a battle rages between Mutant terrorists and law enforcement! Local police officers and agents of the Office of National Emergency arrived just moments ago to arrest an unregistered Mutant by the name of Shiro Yoshida, when they were attacked by a gang of unknown Mutants!”

Vale screamed in terror as bullets flew past her, just barely missing her as they raced towards Nomi Blume. The camera captured the sight of the thirteen year old Mutant catching the bullets and flinging them back at the ONE agents, curving them around the terrified reporter. That footage aired live on local stations, and would go on to be replayed dozens, if not hundreds of times, on national news in the coming days. 

“Nomi!” Scott called out, as he zapped a cop who was about to fire a shotgun at Sunfire. “Let’s wrap this up!”

“Fiiiine,” She groaned. She was just starting to have fun, too. With a roll of her eyes and a shrug of her shoulders, Nomi reached out in the direction of the ONE van and flipped it over, taking out several agents at once, and leaving only a handful of local police left for them to deal with. 

But before they could finish the fight, another party entered the fray. A bright yellow spotlight shone down on Scott, and he looked up to see the demonic red eyes of a Sentinel. The same eyes that watched him as Alex, his brother, was vaporized. Reduced to ash before his eyes. Scott could smell the burning remains of his little brother. 

It wasn’t the same model that they had taken down in Baltimore. It had none of the exposed cables, nor was it as slender. It was bulkier, with purple armored plating covering its entire torso, as well as its shoulders. The spotlight in its chest was triangular, not circular. And while one hand still contained a steel tendril like the previous model, the other was charging a beam powerful enough to vaporize a grown adult. At the sight of it, Scott froze, unable to think, unable to move. Unable to do anything as the Sentinel raised its hand, and the hole in its palm glowed with white hot energy. 

**”HOSTILE MUTANTS IDENTIFIED. LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED.”**

“Mark IV,” He whispered. “Mark IV. Mark IV. Mark IV.”

All of a sudden, something collided with his chest with all the force of a wrecking ball, and he was flung to the ground. His back slammed against the pavement, and a beam of energy scorched the ground where he had been standing just a moment before. He looked up, and saw Joanna straddling him, holding his arms down, and breathing heavily.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She yelled. He could barely hear her over the din of battle. The grinding of metal on metal as the mechanical titan shifted and focused on a new target. The fear, the absolute _terror_ that muffled his thoughts. 

“Mark IV,” Scott whispered. Joanna looked at him like he was crazy, before standing up and pulling him to his feet. “Mark IV,” He said again, looking into her eyes. 

Joanna shook her head and let go of Scott. She leapt up at the Sentinel and landed on it’s knee, just like in her last encounter with one of its kind. But Scott understood what she still didn’t. The Sentinel that she and Nomi had destroyed in Baltimore was a Mark III, and the purple monster that now loomed above them was a Mark IV. 

The Mark III Sentinel came equipped with a simple Mutant tracking software, and its suppression abilities were limited. It relied primarily on the telescoping tendrils that could be released from its hands, as well as its brute strength. But the Mark IV Sentinels, which the X-Men had shamefully failed to destroy in the past, were far, far more deadly. Their heat rays had taken his brother from him, and had now nearly taken Scott’s own life on two separate occasions. And now… Now it was aiming its hand right at Nomi. 

Joanna pounded away at the behemoth’s kneecap, trying to break through its armored plating and damage it, as she had done its predecessor. But the newer model was much more durable, and swatted her away before she could even crack through its outer shell.

Nomi’s eyes grew wide and her heart began to pound like a jackhammer as the Sentinel aimed its heat ray directly at her. She reacted on instinct, flinging the remains of a burned out cop car at the Sentinel, and knocking its aim off course. A beam of intense heat washed over several fallen ONE agents, leaving nothing behind where they once laid.

Scott watched in petrified silence as his teammates were put on the defensive by the Sentinel that still seemed unstoppable. Nomi couldn’t focus long enough to use her powers of magnetism on the monstrosity, not before it would attack her again. Every time that Joanna charged at it, it just slapped her away like a bothersome gnat. Remy was throwing cards at its back, but the explosions barely even registered as a threat to the Mutant hunting machine. Scott had to do something. He was their leader and he was failing them. He had to do something. He had to. He had to. He had to. 

But he couldn’t. 

“No!” Nomi cried out as an energy beam just barely missed her. The hair on her arm was singed from the proximity to the destructive ray of heat, but thanks to Joanna pulling her away, she kept her life for the moment. 

“Dammit, Scott! _Do something_!” Joanna shouted, _pleaded_. The rage she thrived on in the heat of a fight had turned to a stomach twisting, sickening dread. A part of her didn’t truly know whether or not they would all walk away from this fight. But they needed their leader. So she called out to him, and prayed to any god that might listen, that he would hear her.

A thought rose up above the fog in his mind. One solitary thought. Not even a plan, but a sliver of an idea. He broke free from his panicked, frozen stance, and fired a blast at the Sentinel’s face. The attack caught the monster’s attention, and it raised its hand to him. As the energy swelled in its palm, Scott poured everything he had into that slot in its hand, and hoped that it would work. 

Red light began to shine through the seams in the violet plating of the Sentinel’s forearm. After several moments, moments in which everyone on the moonlit street fell silent, and still… The Sentinel’s arm exploded, torn apart by the combined might of Scott’s concussive force beam and the backfire of its own heat ray. 

The monster sagged, the exposed wiring in its shoulder sparking wildly. Henry Calburn, a blonde haired man of twenty eight years old, who had grown up in New Orleans, and whose face had been scarred by Remy’s playing card earlier in the fight, stared up at the machine, and the hope in his eyes began to waver. He no longer had any certainty that the muties he so hated would be taken down. It was anyone’s game. And he knew that the Mutants were thinking the same thing. 

But there was one player that just about everyone had forgotten about in the time since the Sentinel arrived. A man who could turn the tide in the Mutants’ favor. And he was sick and tired of the battle that raged on his street, and that threatened to harm his wife and daughter. Shiro Yoshida, Sunfire, flew directly at the wounded Sentinel, and poured as much heat onto its form as he could muster.

“Hit it hard and don’t stop until it’s scrap!” Scott shouted. His optic blasts slammed into the Sentinel at full power, keeping it off balance as Sunfire turned its purple shell into redhot, melting steel. 

Nomi flung another police cruiser at the robot, managing to dent its chest with the blow. Remy grabbed a piece of the Sentinel’s destroyed arm, charged it up, and gave it to Joanna to throw at the beast’s face. The onslaught was unending, and try as it might, the Sentinel was no longer able to repel its attackers. Without its heat ray, it was reduced to swiping at the Mutants with its remaining arm, as Sunfire reduced it to melting scrap. Finally, Scott was able to spot a weak spot in its head. Where the Sentinel’s scalp had melted and fallen away, there was a chance to access its CPU and put it down, just like the one they destroyed in Baltimore.

“Joanna! Finish it!” Scott ordered, zapping the monster’s head, signaling where to attack. 

The bulletproof vet took on a determined stride as she sprinted towards the behemoth and began to scale it. Nomi raised up another car for her to use as a platform, from which Joanna leapt onto the Sentinel’s head and began pounding away at its CPU. All it took was three straight hits before the computer was reduced to bits of useless metal, wires, and circuitry. 

The great, terrifying thing groaned and swayed as its attackers fell silent, their assault finally coming to an end. The monstrosity that had frozen Scott in absolute terror just minutes before was now nothing to fear at all. They watched with satisfaction as it finally, _finally_ fell onto its side and shut down. The lights in its eyes and on its chest went dim, and Joanna ripped its head off for good measure. 

Sunfire touched down on the ground, and the flames that licked his body vanished, revealing a sneer as he regarded the Sentinel. He spat on its remains, as the Mutant Liberation Front breathed a unified sigh of relief. 

“Thank you, Shiro. We couldn’t have done it without you,” Scott told him.

“I am well aware, Summers.” Shiro unclenched his jaw, and turned to look at his house. It was, to his relief, untouched. He watched in silence as the door opened, and Yuriko and Aimi poked their heads out to witness the aftermath of the battle.

Shiro took a step towards them, before stopping in his tracks. A loud crack rang out in the night, and the man of the hour fell to his knees, and blood soaked his shirt. An empty clicking sound followed, as Shiro looked at the bullet hole in his chest with an expression of pure bafflement. 

Yuriko wailed, Aimi flinched, and Shiro whispered “No…”. Scott dropped to his knees and held onto his friend, trying to support him, lest he fall to the ground entirely. Remy’s face fell, Nomi blinked silently, her mouth agape, and Joanna looked for the source of the bullet. 

Henry Calburn stood alone in the dark, leaning against the upturned ONE van he had arrived in with all his friends and coworkers, not one of whom was still with him among the living. He held a gun in his hand. He smiled vacantly and pulled the trigger, again and again and again, despite the empty clip. He laughed a dry, empty, wheezing laugh, which turned to a groan of pain as Joanna’s fist tore a hole through his chest.

Scott looked into Shiro’s eyes as the former X-Man died in his arms. Yuriko ran, barefoot, across her front lawn, the sidewalk, and the pavement of the road, until she collapsed at her husband’s side. Her hands caressed his face, and she whimpered at the sight of her dying husband. Shiro’s eyes turned not to her, but to Scott, and he opened his mouth with great effort to whisper his final words.

“You… You've killed me…”

His head lolled to the side, and he looked at Yuriko as the light faded from his eyes, as he fell limp, as he breathed his last… As he died. 

“Shiro, Shiro no… Please, no…” Yuriko bowed her head, and hot tears began to stream down her cheeks. She touched her forehead to her dead husband’s, and mourned him. Scott tried to apologize, to say he was sorry for failing to keep her husband safe, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. So he stayed quiet, and he didn’t try to justify his failure. He simply let her mourn, and hung his head in bitter shame. 

“Dad?”

In that moment, all heads turned to watch as Aimi Yoshida, a girl of just ten years old, approached her parents with trepidation. Tears were welling up in her eyes, and she joined her mother in mourning the father she had just lost. 

Scott left them to their mourning, and he left without a word. Joanna, Nomi, and Remy followed him, still grappling with the cost of failure that they now understood. The four Mutants fled the scene in silence, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before more ONE agents arrived. Likely with another Sentinel, if not more. The drive away was filled with an uncomfortable, stifling guilt shared amongst the group. 

By the time they reached the city limits, Nomi had fallen asleep, her head coming to rest on Remy’s side. The cajun wrapped a protective arm around the young girl and sighed. He knew what was going to happen. He had seen it before, so many times. ONE would take Shiro’s body. They weren’t going to so much as let the family bury him. Mutants in Louisiana didn’t get burials, they got dissections, and nobody had the power to fight back against that practice. 

In the front of the car, Joanna stared at the road. Not a single thought ran through her head. The anger, the pure, distilled _rage_ that had driven her in the fight had dissipated in the wake of Shiro’s murder. But as they left New Orleans, she found herself looking at Scott, who sat in the passenger seat beside her. 

His head was pressed against the window, and he hadn’t even thought to take off his visor and replace it with his glasses again. The red light reflected back onto his face, casting it in a dull scarlet glow. How many friends had he lost, she wondered. How many more would he watch die, while he was left alive? He was just a man, growing progressively more broken, but still fighting. Fighting until what? Until he died, like they had? Until he could reunite with his fallen friends and loved ones? 

She fixed her eyes back on the road and set her jaw. She didn’t believe that. She couldn’t. She hadn’t known Scott long, but she did know one thing. Scott Summers believed in the future. People didn’t fight unless they believed they might win, in the end, and he was no different. He was bent, maybe. But he wasn’t broken. He would heal, in time. They all would. And then they’d get up, and they’d fight again, and again, and again. 

Because someone still had to fight for a better tomorrow. And that someone was them.

********************

When ONE arrived at the scene, and found the remains of their fellow agents, the local law enforcement, and the Sentinel, all but two agents dedicated themselves to cleaning up the area with dignity and respect for their fallen comrades. But two were given the task of preparing the Mutie for transport.

Carlos Ramirez and Linda Loan had joined ONE on the exact same day, eight months ago. They became quick friends, and developed a rapport, built largely on their shared love of the northeast indie music scene, bad movies, and a hatred of Mutants. They looked down at Shiro Yoshida’s corpse with disgust, as their coworkers cleaned up the debris from the fight that had ended just a half hour before. 

“Can’t believe they only put down one of ‘em,” Loan muttered, as she nudged the body with her boot. 

“Ortiz said there were around ten of the genefreaks,” Ramirez said. He knelt down next to the body and looked it over. He sniffed, and found that he could still pick of the smell of a fire.

“Ortiz is full of shit. The report said there were only five, including this one.”

“Five? You’re shitting me. How’d they take down a Mark IV?”

“Four words. Nomi Blume, Scott Summers.”

“Holy shit.” Ramirez shook his head, then pulled his cellphone out of his pocket. He urged Loan to come near him, and held out the phone to take a selfie. The image captured the sight of a man sticking out his tongue, a woman giving a peace sign, and the dead body of Shiro Yoshida behind them.

As they put the body into a bag and tossed it haphazardly into the transport, Ramirez’s eyes locked with those of a civilian, who watched with contempt from the front steps of her house. The Mutie’s wife, who had fought tooth and nail with them when they demanded she get away from the crime scene. She had insisted that she be allowed to bury her husband. She only backed down when they threatened to arrest her for obstruction, but still she glared at them. 

“Fuckin’ mutie lover,” Loan muttered as she and Ramirez shut the doors on the transport. “Honestly, we should just arrest the kid now. Save us the trouble it’ll cause when it hits puberty.”

“Not worth the lawsuits,” Ramirez said with a sigh. 

Loan pointed at the wife with her finger and her thumb in the shape of a gun and mimed pulling the trigger with a laugh. She looked forward to the day they extended the MRA to include mutie lovers.

It would take several days for the body to reach its intended location. It was shuffled around and kept on ice for nearly a week before arriving at a lab in New York. Behind several feet of concrete, steel, armed guards and five Mark IV Sentinels, a man who appeared to be no more than thirty years old examined the body of Shiro Yoshida with interest. 

He had been working on it all morning. Poking and prodding it, mucking about with the brain, seeing what he could make it do. Logically, there was no possible way for the body to fly, or to produce the heat it could. But the doctor, unlike the people he interacted with from day to day, understood just how beautiful Mutants were. Their gifts, he found, were a miracle. They could bend reality, the very laws of nature of physics, to their will. But he had tricks of his own. 

The body had been modified in all the right ways. A few small needles poked their way out of its scalp, and an artificial heart had been implanted in its chest. There were even more implants inside of it, gifted to the doctor by Trask Industries for his very important work. He ran a hand through his dark, slicked back hair and reached out to press the button that would activate the implants. Shiro Yoshida’s body began to twitch, and jerk erratically, before settling down. The mechanical heart glowed a bright yellow. After several seconds of silence, Shiro bolted upright with a gasping breath.

“GAH! Yuriko! Tasukete kudasai!” Shiro’s hand leapt to his chest, where it felt something cold and humming. He looked down, and saw the large, ugly device that stuck out of his chest. He looked to the doctor, but only saw a white lab coat, and a pair of red eyes, glowing in the shadows…

“Who are you?! What have you _done_ to me?!” Shiro cried out. He could feel every implanted device, every piece of technology that had been stuck inside of him. And they hurt. “ _TELL ME!_ ”

The doctor placed a hand on his chest and smiled. “Quiet now, Mister Yoshida. No need to shout. I am, after all, the man who has ferried you back to the land of the living.”

“Tell me who you are, you monster!” Shiro raised his hand and tried to shoot a blast of flame at the mad doctor, only to find that nothing happened. He tried again, to similar results. Try as he might, he couldn’t summon even a single flame.

The doctor smiled, and pressed another button. Shiro Yoshida closed his eyes, and though he now lived again, he was as still as the dead. The doctor pressed a third button, this one to an intercom, and spoke into it in a soft, eerily polite voice. 

“Agent Macleod, I’m all done here. I’ll just wrap this little present up, and you can take him on his way to Mister Trask.”

“You got it, Doctor Essex.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry


	6. I Don't Know Where To Turn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Took me a little while to figure this chapter out, but I had a blast writing it! One of my first ideas for this fic is how this AU's Hellfire Club operates and presents itself, and I'm super excited to show that off. 
> 
> Chapter song is Thirty One Today by Aimee Mann! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijKjLkYl9zg)

Angelica sat on a stool in the kitchen, her head propped up by an arm which rested on a cool metal countertop. A college textbook lay open in front of her, but the words were running off the page, into a soup of letters and overly complicated terminology. The kitchen was, at the moment, mostly empty. Only three Mutants were still there this late in the evening, including herself. Most of the staff had gone home after dinner was over and dealt with, but the maids and guards weren’t most of the staff. 

Angelica looked up from her textbook and watched as Tessa flicked a paper football between Sam’s fingers. The young guard stared at the raven haired maid in disbelief, as Angelica smirked at the scene. 

“No fair, Tessa. How come you always win?” Sam asked as he prepared to flick the folded up scrap of paper.

“Because, Sam…” The paper bounced off of one of Tessa’s fingers, and onto the floor. “I know my angles.”

Angelica sighed, and shut her textbook. Psychology was so far beyond her after a day of work. She could call her dad, she thought. She hadn’t spoken to him in over two weeks, and it was hard to deny the homesick feeling that was tying her stomach in knots. She pushed the thought away, however. She didn’t want to risk being seen by someone less willing to bend the rules than Sam and Tessa. She needed this job badly, and the inner circle was nothing if not demanding of their staff. If the White King saw her calling her dad back home in Montana instead of bringing him a cucumber sandwich… She was certain there’d be at least a full fifteen minute long dressing down, followed by her needing to find a new employer. 

“Careful, Tessa,” Angelica said as she stood and stretched her arms. She could feel the joints pop as she reached out as far as her arms would go. “Three strikes, remember?”

Tessa’s face fell, and she swallowed the bitter taste of Angelica’s reminder. Three strikes. Her deal with ONE, when she turned herself in, involved three strikes. While the bracelet that hung from Sam’s wrist was keyed in to detect his energy propulsions, and while Angelica’s was keyed in to detect her microwave radiation powers, Tessa was a special case. Normally, Mutants with physical mutations were taken away, no matter what. Out of sight, out of mind, was ONE’s general policy. Mutants with unnatural hair colors could get away with dyeing their hair, but gills, claws, scales or green skin… They weren’t so lucky. Tessa, though, had a brain that functioned not unlike a computer. She was out of sight, but her mind was far too special for ONE’s liking. 

So they offered the raven haired college professor a deal. So long as she didn’t use her gift, she could avoid a cell in ONE lockup. But to avoid using her gift, her intellect, meant limiting herself. She wasn’t allowed to teach, or to publish any more papers on theoretical mathematics, lest they decide she was using her power to get a leg up on normal folk. People who learned those things “fairly”. Her first strike came when she protested her barring from academia. The second came when a ONE agent decided to taunt her by asking what two plus two came out to. So Tessa took a job as a maid, and she played the part of a simpleton. A moron. A piece of dumb eyecandy. 

Three strikes. And as much as Angelica hated to remind her friend of that fact, she hated even more the idea of Tessa being sent to some camp in the middle of nowhere, never to be seen again.

“Luck, then. We will chalk it up to luck,” Tessa said, more to herself than to Angelica or Sam.

Angelica yawned, and straightened out the skirt of her uniform. She hated how degrading it was, to be made to dress like a french maid day in and day out, but the Kings and Queens of the inner circle had their tastes and traditions, and so she didn’t get much of a choice in the matter. She fixed her hair, making sure that the long, fake red locks of her wig weren’t hanging in front of her face. 

“I should get back to work,” She muttered, eyeing the door.

“Me too,” Sam said with a heavy sigh. “Harvey and Janet are off the clock soon, and someone’s gotta cover the front doors.”

The pair filtered out of the kitchen, leaving Tessa behind to rest her legs and exercise her mind in peace. The winding white and powder blue halls of the Hellfire Club were lavishly decorated, and they passed by countless vases and statues that were worth more than both of their lives put together. Artifacts that belonged in museums, instead used as proof that the kings and queens were disgustingly wealthy. 

They came to a set of large, ornate wooden doors, where Angelica came to a stop. She placed one hand on the handle, and watched as Sam kept walking. He waved goodbye as he headed for the front entrance to the building, to take Harvey and Janet’s place and make sure nobody trespassed. She turned back to the door, took a deep breath, and put on her best fake smile before pulling it open and walking inside. 

********************

Scott stood on the front steps of the Hellfire Club and looked at his team. The drive from New Orleans back up to New York had given them time to decompress, and to process their failure. Still, the weight of Shiro’s death was heavy on his shoulders. They had avoided checks from ONE at the state borders thanks to a combination of Joanna’s veteran status and Remy’s silver tongue, but not once had Scott let his guard down. 

Joanna stood beside him, her arms crossed in front of her chest and a determined look in her eye. She, Scott, and Remy all wore suits, and the stiff fabric reminded her of her old dress uniform. She had been surprised when Scott pulled them out of his duffel bag earlier in the evening, but as he outlined their next goal, she came around to wearing one, at least for the time being. 

Nomi, however, had fought tooth and nail over wearing a simple black dress. It wasn’t until Remy pointed out that they’d be sneaking into a club for the rich elites of New York that her rebellious nature was sated. Joanna highly doubted Remy’s promise that he’d make sure the girl didn’t try to steal anything. She also doubted his insistence that he wouldn’t steal anything either. 

But they were done planning, and they were done waiting. Joanna’s watch showed that it was time to start, and so Scott turned to the front door and felt around for a hidden switch. He pressed a small wooden slat inwards, and waited for a guard to open the door and welcome them inside. 

The guard was a gangly blond teenager. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen, even as he tried to stand up stall and puff out his chest. Whether he had worked at the Hellfire Club before, Scott couldn’t say for certain. He certainly wasn’t wearing the uniform that Scott was expecting. Gone were the blue and red bodysuits with blank face masks. Instead, the boy was dressed in a dark, wine red waistcoat and cream colored breeches. A silver bracelet hung from his wrist, with a blinking green light indicating that his powers weren’t in use. The bracelet, and his shaggy blond hair, were the only things that marked him as being from this century. 

“I’m guessing the club’s gone through a few changes since the last time I was here,” Scott mumbled to himself. The guard’s cheeks flushed red, and he stepped outside to meet the party. 

“D’ya have business here, sir?” He asked, his Kentucky drawl coming through loud and clear, adding another anachronism to his appearance.

“Yes, actually, I do,” Scott said. “My name is Erik Redford. I have a meeting with the White Queen.”

The boy nodded his head. The only people who even knew there _was_ a White Queen were the sort of people who had business there. Still, she would have his head on a platter if he didn’t check in first. So Sam Guthrie paused for a moment, and urged a thought in the inner circle’s direction. 

_”Um, Miss White Queen, ma’am?”_

There was a pause, as Scott stared down the boy and a tense silence hung in the air. Joanna began to shift on her heels, bracing for a fight. Remy’s hand fell towards his pocket, where a deck of cards lay waiting. Nomi sat on the steps and pulled a paperclip from the sidewalk to her waiting hand. 

_”What is it?”_

Sam breathed a sigh of relief as she replied, prompting Scott to cock an eyebrow. 

_”There’s a group of people here to see ya, ma’am. A Mister Erik Redford and… Uh, I guess some friends a’his?”_

_”Intriguing… Send them in. It’s been quite some time since I’ve had the pleasure to see this… Mister Redford.”_

As her voice vanished from his mind, Sam smiled warmly at the group and beckoned them to come inside. His stiff demeanor had vanished, forgotten entirely after his awkward staring match with the man in the red glasses. But if he was a friend of the White Queen’s, as she had implied, then Sam was sure the guy was on the up and up. 

As he led them into the Hellfire Club’s foyer, and into the halls beyond, Sam did his best to make small talk with the strangers. 

“So, how long’s it been since ya last came ‘round here, Mister Redford?” He asked.

“It’s… Been a few years,” He answered. “I’ve been meaning to visit lately. I can’t help but notice that the White Queen has been redecorating.”

“Huh? Oh, I guess that must’a been before I got a job here,” Sam laughed. “Harv and Jan, they’re some of my coworkers, they said the place used’ta be more modern.”

Scott noted that a few of the art pieces were holdovers from before, and that the basic layout of the building was unchanged. But beyond that, it was like it had been time shifted back a few hundred years. 

“I guess the White Queen’s just real into this Italian renaissance stuff,” Sam mused. 

“Rococo, actually,” Remy corrected. Scott, Joanna, and Nomi all looked at him, surprised. “What? I like art. Dere’s more to me than meets de eye, you know.”

“Who gives a shit?” Nomi muttered under her breath. “All this stuff’s too big to take anyways.” A nudge in the shoulder from Remy, along with a flash of a handful of pearls in his palm, proved her wrong and put a massive grin on her face. 

“Alright, here we are!” Sam announced, as they came to a set of large, ornate doors. He pulled them open with a great degree of effort, and stood to the side as the four guests walked on in. 

They found themselves in a lounge, decorated similarly to the rest of the building. Walls of pastel blue met a floor and ceiling of marble. Set into the far wall was a fireplace, with a massive television set hanging above it. Aside from that one anachronism, the rest of the room followed the same rococo aesthetic that Scott had come to expect. 

Closer to the fire, four figures reclined on ornately decorated furniture, while another stood with a tray in her hands. Two were men, seated on a canapé, and dressed not unlike Sam, though their clothing was far more fanciful, featuring full coats, and their hair was covered by powdered wigs. The other two, both women, stood clothed in regal gowns with full skirts. The final woman, standing at attention with a tray of pastries, was a maid with long, bright red hair. As Scott and his party approached them, one woman turned to look, and a coy smile lit up her face. Despite all the theatrics and makeup, Scott could still recognize that face. He doubted he’d ever forget it. 

Emma Grace Frost. Daughter of two of the world’s wealthiest humans, yet removed from the family and pushed out onto the streets after she told her family who and what she truly was. But in joining the Hellfire Club, she rose to a station even higher than that of her parents, even becoming part of the Hellfire Club’s inner circle. And now, it was apparent that she had risen even further, becoming the Lord Cardinal of the group. The most powerful Mutant in America. 

“Ah, Erik… How lovely to see you again,” Emma cooed in a posh English accent. She flicked a hand fan and began to fan herself, purely for show. 

“Emma.” Scott looked her over again, with an amused smirk. “You look different.”

Different was an understatement. He had expected to meet with a woman with long, straight blonde hair and a simple but elegant white suit. He had never seen Emma in anything else, until now. But there she stood, in a gown that hearkened back to eighteenth century France. She wore a floor length dress of pastel blue and pearl white, with a tight bodice and dangerously low neckline. The dress was lavishly covered in bows, frills, and lace. She was practically swimming in her skirts, which extended to both sides no less than two feet. Strings of pearls hung from her neck, and she held an antique fan in one gloved hand. Her blonde hair now towered above her head, interwoven with lilies and wildflowers, balancing delicately yet somehow remaining in place. 

_”Different is one way to put it, Mister Summers,”_ She whispered in his mind. Her natural Boston accent dominated the thoughts she shared; a glimpse at the true Emma, the one she hid in order to keep up appearances.

“Yes, isn’t it grand, Mister Redford?” She said aloud, giving him a slight nod. He understood the game. He had played it before, after all. Both with her, and with Jean. “To what do we owe your return to the Hellfire Club?”

_”You’re using your telepathy?”_ Scott asked silently, his eyes darting to the bracelet around her wrist, which still blinked green. 

“I just came to ask a favor, if I could be so bold,” He said with a small, put-upon smile.

_”I told a little white lie when I registered. I told them about my diamond form, but I must have forgotten to mention my telepathy. As a result, they only keyed the bracelet in to detect the one, and not the other. Oops.”_

“Why don’t you and your friends come sit down, and we can discuss business later,” She suggested, gesturing to an empty chaise longue beside her. 

Emma’s hungry eyes looked over Scott’s body as he walked past her and took a seat. For a moment, he locked eyes with the other extravagantly dressed woman in the room. It took him longer to recognize her, not only due to her also embracing the Hellfire Club’s rococo styling, but also due to her dark brown hair. But he could never truly forget any of his former classmates, from back when he first joined the X-Men. Lorna Dane was an old friend. And of course, she recognized him. 

The other three, however, were strangers to him. One of the men, who reclined back and wore a cocky grin, was Brian Braddock. The other, who sat rigidly and was still recovering from surgery to alter his pointed ears and make them seem more human, was Jean Paul Beaubier. The maid, Angelica Jones. A pupil of Emma’s, and a keen, yet silent, observer to the events that would soon unfold .

Remy sat between the White and Black Kings, and slung his arms over their shoulders with a degree of comfort that threw both of them off guard. He threw his head back and flashed a smile as he eased in and enjoyed himself. Nomi leaned against the furniture and crossed her arms in front of her chest, eyeing the Black Queen with interest. She didn’t know that woman in the seafoam green gown shared her gift of magnetism, but she could feel a connection. One she couldn’t explain.

Joanna stood beside Scott, watching the room with a degree of suspicion. She was tense, and Scott was glad for that. He could count on her to protect him as he conducted their business. A sentiment he indicated with a grazing touch of her hand. She nodded at him, a thin smile gracing her otherwise stony expression.

“You’re certainly comfortable,” The Black King grumbled in a notable Quebecois accent. But when Remy locked eyes with him, he couldn’t fight the creeping blush that grew across his cheeks. 

“I have to say, I’m a big fan of the style around here,” Remy said fondly. “Le style rocaille, le style moderne, le gout.”

“I see we have a fellow history fan,” Lorna noted as she fanned herself. It was so strange, Scott thought, to see her as a part of the Inner Circle. She had left the X-Men weeks before him, vanished the very same night that they lost Alex. Yet she displayed no signs of heartbreak. No signs of mourning. She acted as vapid and playful as Emma and Brian. If possible, he’d try to speak to her in private, later. No doubt, she planned to do the same.

Emma looked from Scott to Joanna, and from her to Nomi, and then to Remy, before returning to Scott.

“You have quite the entourage, Erik. I simply must know how you all found each other,” She implored.

“This is Diana, my security guard,” He lied, gesturing to Joanna. She nodded her head, playing along. She was grateful that he didn’t jump to using her as a fake wife. Next he gestured to Remy. “And over there is my…”

“I’m Olivier Winters,” Remy said simply, but oh so convincingly as he lied through his teeth. “Erik’s partner. But you know, we ain’t all dat exclusive,” He added, winking at Jean Paul, who grew even more flustered.

“I-I see…” The Black King mumbled.

_”What happened to the old Inner Circle?”_ Scott asked Emma telepathically as their charade went on. 

“Partners? Really? Oh, Erik, you never told me!” Emma gushed in a tone as ostentatious as her dress. “And here I was, hoping that I had a chance.”

_”I wasn’t too pleased with their behavior back during that whole Dark Phoenix debacle. Had I known what they were doing to Jean Grey, I’d have put a stop to it. When I discovered the role they played in her demise, I rattled their brains so hard, they’ve all been reduced to having the mental capacity of newborn infants.”_

Scott’s eyes widened. _”You’re joking, aren’t you?”_

“Rebecca here is our kid,” Remy continued, patting Nomi on the shoulder. The girl looked entirely too pleased with their cover story, a fact she didn’t even bother to hide. 

“Oh yeah. They adopted me from Canada, eh,” Nomi said, in the most flat and unconvincing Canadian accent she could manage. The obvious lie brought a smile to Lorna’s face, which she hid behind her fan.

_”I’m not one to joke, Scott. And for what they did to your wife, I’d say they deserve far worse than the embarrassing fate I’ve given them,”_ Emma muttered into Scott’s mind as the farce continued, uninterrupted, around them. Remy was more than capable of keeping Lorna, Brian, and Jean Paul entertained while they discussed their business in the privacy of their own minds. The rest of the world fell away, and they focused only on each other.

_”When will you return them to normal?”_

_”Even if I felt the urge to do so, I doubt I could. No, Sebastian, Donald, and Selene will have to take the long way around, I’m afraid. However, I think it’s time that you and I get down to business.”_ Emma looked Scott in the eye, and a hardened look began to form. _”Why do I have wanted fugitives in my parlor?”_

_”Because we need your help, Emma. I need your help.”_

_”While I love to hear you beg, I’m afraid my hands are tied. Much as I wish I could, I can’t commit myself to the X-Men’s cause, or to yours.”_

_”You don’t need to be public about it. We just need somewhere to stay. Funds to get ourselves started. A Cerebro, and a telepath to operate it. I can find the people, but I need your support to make this possible.”_

_”I’d be risking my neck to help you. I’m already doing what I can to shelter the Mutants under my care. If ONE learns that I’m helping you, it puts all of them in danger as well. Angelica, Samuel, Tessa, Clarice, Sharon… They depend on me. Not to mention Lorna and Jean Paul. Why should your fight endanger them?”_

_”Because it won’t stop here. You know that as well as I do, Emma. It starts with registration. But then they decide that Mutants would be happier if they were all grouped together in camps. Then they start executing the ones they deem too dangerous. Eventually, they’re killing all of us. Designing a drug that’ll eliminate the X-gene before it can activate. Within a decade or two, we’re all dead and forgotten…”_

_”...Unless you fight back,”_ She finished the grim thought for him. 

_”Exactly. I hate to say it, but Magneto was right. Mutantkind needs people to fight for them, and the X-Men aren’t fighting. They’re too afraid now. They’re just treading water, same as the Hellfire Club. But if you help us out, we can stand a chance. Please, Emma. Help us fight back.”_

_”I’ll make you a deal, Scott. If you do something for me first, then I’ll give you what you’re asking for. There’s a convoy, taking Mutants from general lockup in NYC to a camp in Syracuse in exactly one week. If you can save those Mutants, and bring them back here covertly, then we have a deal.”_

_”We’ll get it done. Thank you, Emma.”_

She smiled softly, genuinely, and thanked him in turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please, don't forget to kudos and comment! I love to hear your thoughts!


	7. Light My Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's your chapter song, gang. Light My Fire by The Doors.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq8k-ZbsXDI

They had their orders. They had their targets. They just had to save them, and get out without any casualties. It wouldn’t be such a daunting task, if they had ever succeeded in doing that before. 

Scott watched from the rooftops as the transport approached. It was about to leave the city, and begin the long trek to Syracuse. Emma had insisted that they stop it before it got too far away from New York City. That it was vital they reach it before it could meet with its convoy of Sentinels outside the city’s borders. Beyond that, she had refused to elaborate.

His mind briefly returned to that conversation. After he and his group had left the Hellfire Club, later that night, Emma gave them access to a backdoor. A hidden entrance to the building, which they used over the following week to meet with her in private and plan the breakout. In all that time, she never once broke her character as the flighty, vapid White Queen. But within the bounds of their telepathic conversations, she was consistently frank and honest with the group. Aside from her insistence that she not reveal _who_ they were saving from ONE custody, of course.

He waited until the unmarked black van slowed at the bridge. ONE was being cagey about the move. No public reports on who was being moved, meaning that they were still kept in the dark. A part of him, the little voice of Xavier’s old lessons, worried that they were making a mistake. That whoever was in that van, they were better off locked away. Someone too dangerous to humans and Mutants alike. But then he remembered…

Xavier was dead. And humans killed him. 

The transport came to a stop, and Scott acted. He fired a small concussive force blast at the front of the van, triggering the air bags, which would give them a few moments more to get into the fray before the ONE agents could react.

Scott leapt from the rooftop, trusting that Nomi would follow the plan. Luckily, she had paid attention, and she caught the metal on his person, slowing his fall and bringing him down in front of her just as she pulled her hood down and flashed a devious smile. 

“Finally, some action,” She said, as she reached out and shoved the guards at the bridge to the side. 

Scott smiled briefly at the sentiment as he fired another blast, this one at the door of the van, denting it and weakening the hinges. Joanna and Remy revealed themselves, fulfilling their positions in the plan by battling the armed guards directly. Charged playing cards detonated at their feet, and a pair of them were flung by Joanna into the water off in the distance. 

Scott and Nomi walked towards the van, their stride unbreakable even as they were fired upon. Nomi caught what bullets came their way and sent them back to their owners. Once they were at the van, the only people who stood in their way were the ONE agents who had been driving it. One flashed a stun baton and dove for Nomi, only to have his skull pulverized by Joanna’s fist as she joined them. 

“Thanks,” Scott said in a voice far too calm for the chaotic situation they were in. 

“Don’t mention it,” She replied, as she ripped the doors off their hinges. A small hail of bullets bounced off of her face and onto the ground as the ONE agent inside tried his best to take her down. “Man, fuck you,” Joanna spat before throwing him to the ground and stomping through his chest. 

The gunfire ceased quickly, as Remy rejoined them. All guards and agents had been rendered unconscious, if not deceased, and the night grew quiet once again. But like in New Orleans, they knew there was a ticking clock. Likely an even quicker one, being that New York City was practically the playground of Sentinels. But Emma had known what she was getting them into, and it soon became apparent that there was a reason ONE wasn’t publicizing who they were trying to transport upstate.

St John Allerdyce stood from his seat inside the back of the van and casually hopped out. His dirty blonde hair had grown shaggy and unkempt since Scott’s last encounter with him. But he was still the same Pyro.

“Hey mate. Fancy seeing you here,” Pyro said with a chuckle. His thick Australian accent was as clear as ever, unchanged by his years abroad. “What happened to the rest of ya? Don’t recognize any of these muties.”

Behind him, the other prisoners began to filter out of the truck as well. A trio of teenagers, along with a heavily tattooed man who was roughly ten years Scott’s senior. All of them, Pyro included, wore heavy manacles over their hands and thick collars around their necks. With just a simple gesture, Nomi unlocked their restraints, and their powers quickly came flooding back to them. 

“Shit, mate. She related to Mags? That why you’re bustin’ me out?” Pyro asked, pointing at the girl. 

“It was a favor for the White Queen,” Scott told him. “Trust me, I didn’t even know you were in there. If I had, I might have told her no.”

“The White Queen? Really? Well fuck me sideways, I didn’t expect the boss to pull that string just for me. Guess he really does care.” Pyro snickered, and turned to the small crowd of Mutants. “By the by, anybody got a lighter I can borrow? I wanna roast some flatscans before we pop off.” To punctuate his point, he kicked a downed guard in the ribs and laughed again. 

“You’re not roasting anybody, idiot,” Joanna told him. She grabbed his shoulder tight, and looked the pyromaniac sternly in the eye until he relented. “Now how the hell are we getting out of here before the Sentinels come and turn us to ash?”

“I believe I can be of assistance there,” The tattooed man said in a weasely little voice, which seemed to belong to someone half his size. “The name’s Telford Porter, but the police call me… The Vanisher. I, uh… I teleport.”

“Looks like de boss lady covered our escape plan after all,” Remy said with a grin. 

“Alrighty then, everybody bunch up!” Vanisher insisted, pushing everyone together. “Where to, ladies and gentlemen?”

“And others,” One of the teens muttered under their breath. Nomi looked at them, and for once in her life, she found that she actually liked someone her age. A short mop of messy black hair sat atop their head, and they wore a necklace with a pair of dice hanging from the chain. 

As Scott told Vanisher the address of the Hellfire Club, and specified where to find the lounge, the teenager, Chance, slipped something to Nomi before looking back to their friends. In a massive flash of blinding light, all nine Mutants vanished. 

Another flash of light announced their return to the Hellfire Club’s lounge. The four teenagers found themselves reeling, and fighting back the urge to vomit or pass out. The adults, however, were more capable of withstanding the stresses of teleportation. 

“Yeah, yeah, it happens, kid,” Vanisher told Chance as he patted them on the back. “Now then, if you’ll all excuse moi, I shall just make my way on out of here…”

“You’ll do no such thing, Telford,” Emma instructed, pointing her hand fan at the petty criminal. With just that motion and the glare that accompanied it, he found himself meekly following her orders without question. 

The White Queen wasn’t waiting alone for the group’s return, however. At her side, like always, was the redheaded maid. At Emma’s direction, the girl offered a tray of pastries to the newly freed prisoners. As they ate, and relished the freedom they now had, Emma fanned herself, entirely too pleased with the results of the night’s effort.

“You’ve performed admirably, Mister Summers,” She tittered. She stepped away from the cluster, her elegant, pastel pink dress gliding across the floor as she made for the fireplace. Scott followed, walking stiffly. Joanna caught the movement, and kept an ear out. “I’m ever so glad to see that your Mutant Liberation Front has, well, liberated these Mutants. You’re certainly living up to the name.”

“Cut the bullshit, lady,” Joanna demanded, stomping across the room and pressing a finger against Emma’s sternum. “You just had us spring one of Magneto’s people from prison. Who the hell knows what he’s gonna do now? You should have _told us_ Pyro was in that transport!”

Emma’s eyes flicked down to Joanna’s hands, then back up to her face. Her own bemused expression didn’t falter. In a voice that still displayed little regard for the situation at hand, she responded with a surprising degree of frankness.

“I thought you were supposed to be freeing Mutants? Or was that all just talk?” She smiled with confidence as Joanna and Scott were taken aback by the question. “You all came barging into my parlor, uninvited, and _demanded_ that I lend you my aid. But now you’re upset that you just so happened to rescue a criminal? Quite the hypocrisy, coming from the people who recruited two criminals themselves.”

“We’re not murderers,” Scott muttered, though it came across as more of a justification for himself than for Emma. 

“No? Because the news has been talking all about the ONE agents you killed down in New Orleans not long ago.” Emma spoke severely, all playfulness vanishing completely from her voice for the first time. “I have no qualms with your methods. In fact, I find them quite necessary if we’re going to have any success in this endeavor. But you must _accept_ that you’re not playing by the rules anymore. You are to this country as Magneto once was. And that means that you will, now and many times in the future, come to the aid of wanted terrorists such as St John Allerdyce. That means that each of _you_ will be seen as that very same sort of terrorist.”

“...Did you just say _our_ cause?” Scott asked quietly. 

“I did,” Emma answered, her voice growing slightly more gentle. “You’ve all proven yourselves, and I’d be a fool to turn you away now.” She turned to look at the small cluster of Mutants who still found themselves devouring the food from Angelica’s platter. “Mister Porter, I expect you to return Mister Allerdyce to his master on Asteroid M. And St John… Do be sure to tell Maxwell that he now owes a debt to the Mutant Liberation Front.”

“You got it, queenie. But he doesn’t owe _you_ anymore,” Pyro said with a sloppy grin, his mouth full of strawberry shortcake. 

“You’re going to have to tell me the story behind that at some point,” Scott said with a small but grateful smile. 

“Oh, I’m sure I will someday. But for now… I’ll have to find accommodations for the rest of our guests.”

“If it’s not too much trouble, lady, I kinda wanna go with these guys,” One of the teens, a young blonde girl in a pink jacket, said while pointing her thumb at Pyro and Vanisher. The other two, Chance included, nodded their heads in agreement. 

“Are you sure?” Scott asked them. “There’s also a railroad that’s trying to get Mutants to Scotland. The X-Men have an ally there, who has been keeping Mutants safe. Otherwise, we’d be happy to have your help in the MLF.”

“No offense, but the X-Men kinda suck at doing anything right these days dude,” Chance said with a snort. “I’d rather take my chances with Magneto. Ariel and Gomi feel the same way.”

“Very well then,” Emma said as she placed a gloved hand on Ariel’s shoulder. “You three take care. I’m sure you won’t be the last to seek refuge up there.” 

“Surprised she actually gives a damn about them,” Joanna said under her breath. “Or anyone, for that matter.”

“Don’t be too surprised.” Joanna turned to look at the maid in surprise, having never heard her speak in all the time they had spent around her and her mistress. “The White Queen has a soft spot for kids.”

“What’s your deal?” Joanna asked, eyeing the girl’s bracelet with thinly veiled contempt. 

“I generate heat, mostly,” She explained with a shrug of her shoulders. “Microwave radiation, to be more specific.” Despite the plainness with which she delivered her answer, there was a tinge of sadness to her voice. A sadness that didn’t go unnoticed by the former soldier. 

“How’d you end up with Frost?” 

“I applied for a job here in my first year of college. I heard that they didn’t have a problem with hiring Mutants. The kings and queens can be pretty full of themselves, but… I dunno, Emma’s never done wrong by me. She’s helped me out a lot over the years.”

“She convince you to register?”

“What other choice was there?” She asked. 

“Fighting back. Making them pay. Showing them that we’re not gonna be their slaves.”

She swallowed, and nodded her head. “I’m not really a fighter, you know.”

“We’re built for fighting, girl. That’s why they’re afraid of us.”

The maid opened her mouth to respond, but found herself cut off by Emma, who broadcast a message to everyone’s minds at once. It was impossible to ignore, as her thoughts appeared as if they were their own. Quite the disorienting experience for those who had never spoken telepathically before. 

_”If you’d all be so kind, I think it’s about time everyone was on their way,”_ She thought with a coy smile and a wave of her fan. With their attention caught, she switched seamlessly back to spoken dialogue. “If you’re heading to live up on that silly little space rock, please see Mister Porter. If you plan to partake in an all new American revolution, then stay with Mister Summers. Either way, please… Prepare to leave so I can get my beauty sleep.”

It didn’t take long for them to sort themselves out. Chance, Ariel, and Gomi stood with Pyro and Vanisher. Chance and Nomi locked eyes, and the blue haired teenager nodded, and shifted on the balls of her feet. The Mutant Liberation Front stood together, all feeling the slightest bit disappointed that none of the rescued Mutants had chosen to join in their mission. But to everyone’s surprise, and Joanna’s satisfaction, they were joined by one particular person. 

“Angelica?” Emma asked, confusion and a small hint of worry creeping into her voice. “You can’t be serious, can you?”

Angelica took a deep breath, and looked at Joanna, who gave her a slight nod. She looked to Emma, determination filling her eyes, and clenched her fists. “I can’t just sit around and wait for things to get better, Miss Frost. I… I have to fight back. You have no idea how _badly_ I wanted to join them when they went to stop that prison transport. I can’t just let this opportunity slip by.”

Emma stepped closer to the girl, and she placed a hand on Angelica’s shoulder. Her eyes fell shut, and a thought extended from her mind to her pupil’s. _”Are you truly certain? I’d never forgive myself if I let you get killed out there.”_

_”I’ll be alright. My powers are strong, and I know how to control them now. Much better than I did when I was a teenager, at least. And besides… We’re built for fighting, Miss Frost… That’s why they hate us.”_

Emma smiled weakly, and nodded her head. Her hand fell from Angelica’s shoulder, and she took a step back. “I suppose I’ll have to find a new handmaid then. Perhaps Tessa… Regardless, I accept this resignation of yours. Much as it pains me to do so.”

Emma turned to look at Vanisher and waved him off. “You may go now,” She said simply. He nodded, and with a flash of brilliant light, vanished with his passengers, leaving Emma alone with the Mutant Liberation Front. 

“Where are we going, then?” Scott asked. “I trust that you have some sort of base lined up for us?”

“Yes, I do,” Emma said with a deep sigh. “I called in a few favors, paid off a few contractors, that sort of thing. Once Vanisher returns, as per the mental command I implanted in his mind, he’ll take you four… You _five_ to your new home. Should you ever need transport in the future, I have someone who is willing to lend a hand. Once you all get settled in at your new place, I’ll give you her contact information.”

“Thank you, Emma,” Scott said. He spoke sincerely; she could tell even without her telepathy. 

“Where are we goin’, exactly?” Remy asked. Emma smiled, and Angelica coughed awkwardly. 

“I’ll let Angelica explain,” Emma said with a devilish grin. 

“I helped pick out the location,” Angelica explained, nervously rubbing her forearm. “It’s secluded, the US Government thinks it’s abandoned, and it’s out of their jurisdiction anyways. There’s nowhere in the world that’s safer for us to stay.”

“Where?” Scott asked.

“An abandoned government facility up in Canada. Back in the seventies, it housed a project called Weapon X.”

Emma tittered as Scott hung his head. Joanna’s brow furrowed in confusion, and Remy began to size up Angelica, as of yet unsure of the newest recruit. But Nomi, who had stayed mostly quiet since they returned to the Hellfire Club, was far far away from the matter at hand. 

She held in her hoodie pocket the item that Chance had slipped her. It was a small purple inhaler, like the kind used by people with asthma. There was a scrap of paper wrapped around it, with a word written on it in pencil. She had heard about it, back when she was in school. Kids loved to spread rumors, but she thought they were nonsense. Until now, of course. 

Thanks to her new friend, she knew that Kick was very real indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! Trivia time!
> 
> Vanisher, Chance, Gomi, and Ariel are all a big part of the X-Men miniseries "Fallen Angels". And since I'm dedicated to having as many cameos as possible in this fic, I decided to use them. The fact that I needed a teleporter helped too, of course. 
> 
> And then I decided to use Pyro for no other reason than that I needed a Brotherhood member, and he's one of my favorites. Plus, he's pretty chaotic and violent, which makes him a better fit for the "oh god did we make a mistake?" role than, say, Destiny or Toad. 
> 
> Originally, Polaris was going to appear again this chapter. However, I couldn't really fit her in like I wanted to, so I decided to save it for next time. 
> 
> And as always, don't forget to kudos and comment!


	8. Photographs and Still Frames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter song for today is Good Riddance by Green Day. It'll make sense by the end, trust me.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnQ8N1KacJc

Joanna was surprised by how much Canada felt like the United States. For some reason, she had expected the country to feel different, in some intrinsic way that couldn’t be explained. But the trees, the air, the ground beneath her feet… It didn’t feel any different from New York. It was just a forest. It was just a place.

Scott was a ways ahead, looking up at the structure. The complex. The facility that was soon to be their base of operations. His arms hung at his sides and he stared up at it, standing rigid, but without stability. A simple push would have been enough to topple the man over. His facial hair had grown out in the weeks since he had left the X Mansion. He looked tired. Tired all the time. But he never spoke of it. 

Joanna walked closer. Twigs snapped underfoot, but Scott didn’t snap to attention. He turned his head to the side, and gazed at the trees. At the leaves. They were still green, but only just. Browns and reds and yellows were beginning to overwhelm them. They were growing crisp. Yet they hadn’t begun to fall. Not yet. 

She stood at his side and sized him up. His blue and yellow hoodie, branded with an X on the breast, had grown dirty and ragged in the few short weeks that they had known one another. His jeans were torn from being scraped along pavement and the fights they had survived. He looked like a mess, and she had a growing suspicion that it wasn’t the norm for him. But clearly, it was becoming the norm.

She followed his gaze, and looked at the Weapon X facility that sprawled out before them. It was a great, oppressive _thing_. A mixture of steel and concrete, which had once housed experiments that the Canadian government denied it had ever authorized. Experiments that destroyed a man’s mind, body, and soul. 

And they were about to call it home.

“So this is it, huh?” She asked, giving a tense nod to the facility. 

“It is,” Scott said in a hoarse voice that was becoming far too familiar. 

“Did we sweep for bugs or surveillance equipment yet?”

“Nomi is.”

“Did Wolverine really get ripped open and pumped full of metal here?”

“He did.”

“Damn.”

Angelica stood by the front door to the complex. The back of her head pressed against the cool, rough concrete of the wall. Remy approached from around the corner and flashed a small, friendly smile as he noticed her leaning against the wall. In the dark of night, his irises burned so brightly. So intently. It was impossible not to look at them. 

“Hey chere,” He whispered in that heady, accented voice of his. “Now, I don’ think we been properly introduced yet.”

“Not really, no,” Angelica admitted. She tucked a lock of false red hair behind her ear and felt her body grow hot. 

“Remy LeBeau. Thief, conman, dashing rogue.”

“Angelica Jones. People usually call me Angie. Or Angel,” She added, thinking back to what her father always called her. A pit dropped in her stomach as she realized that he didn’t know where she was at that moment. As far as he knew, she was still working at the Hellfire Club. Still going to college. 

“Y’alright chere?” Remy asked. Suddenly, he was tilting her chin upwards with his thumb and forefinger. Looking into her eyes with concern written across his scruffy face. 

“Yeah, I uhh… I’ll be fine,” She told him. “Just nervous about all this,” She insisted. “But I’m alright,” She lied. 

“Must be cold in dat getup,” He cracked, looking her up and down with a gentle smirk. Angelica looked down at herself and flushed a deep red. She had almost forgotten, in all the excitement and teleportation, that she was still wearing a maid’s uniform. 

“Trust me, I don’t plan on wearing this after tonight,” She said with a laugh. “I’m normally a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl.”

“Really? I thought ya just really liked frills and lace,” Remy ribbed. “Ya got anything else to wear, though? Cuz I thought you joinin’ us was a last minute sorta deal.”

“I’ll be fine. We factored clothing into the budget. Not just for you four, but for anyone who you rescue too. There are enough beds and clothes for upwards of thirty people. Myself included, now.”

Remy nodded, and looked off into the distance as Scott and Joanna approached. He flicked his wrist, and a playing card appeared in his hand. His eyes burned a bit brighter, and he gestured to the heavy steel doors. 

“Want me to blow de doors open, boss?”

“We rewired the access codes,” Angelica told him. She looked at Scott and brushed her fingers against a small keypad that was set into the wall beside the doors. “Three five-”

“Not yet,” Scott instructed. He glanced to the side, and called out. “Nomi! Are you finished with the sweep?!”

The thirteen year old responded by dropping a ball of crushed together security cameras on the dirt before them. She sauntered into view, one hand firmly stuck in the pocket of her hoodie, and another camera floating above the other hand’s palm.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

“Um. Those aren’t _our_ security cameras, are they?” Angelica asked, pointing at the pile of junk. 

“I’m not an _idiot_ ,” Nomi bemoaned, tossing her head back and sagging her shoulders. “These were all up in the trees. Pretty sure most of them don’t even work anymore. They’re friggin’ ancient.”

“Oh thank God.” Angelica breathed a sigh of relief. “Miss Frost’s people redid all the security systems and updated the technology inside. The passcode is three five seven zero five two four nine. Try not to forget it.”

“Chere, Remy don’ forget _anythin’_ a cute girl say.”

“Why do you talk in the third person? Friggin’ weirdo,” Nomi muttered as she slumped against the wall on the opposite side of the door from Angelica.

“I’m with the kid. It’s weird,” Joanna agreed. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and caught a slight smirk from the young teenager.

“Can we please just… Go inside?” Scott asked, in his weary, yet still commanding, voice. Angelica jumped, and punched in the access code, which prompted the heavy steel doors to finally swing open and allow the five Mutants inside. 

It was a cold, clinical looking building; as oppressive on the inside as it was on the outside. All of them, save for Angelica, had been expecting the halls to be dark, dusty and full of cobwebs. Cracked floors and claw-shredded walls. Instead, it was neat, and clean, and devoid of any sense of life or history. 

“Our contractors got a lot done in the past week,” Angelica explained, rather casually as she walked further into the main hall. There was an elevator on the opposite wall from the entrance, as well as two wings of the building that branched off to each side. “Bedrooms are down the right. Mister Summers, you’re in A1, Miss Cargill is in A2, Nomi is in A3. Remy, you’re in B1.”

“And in the left wing?” Joanna asked, eyeing the hall. 

“Kitchen, living areas, mess hall, that sort of thing. Oh, and downstairs, in the old lab area, we set up a Danger Room. There are a few surprises down there, but they’re pretty great. I think you guys will like them!”

The way she showed off the facility, and listed its features, made the college aged girl seem almost like a bouncy realtor, giving a tour of a new home for a family to consider. Still, all of them, even Nomi, even Angelica, found themselves thinking of what this place once was. The people who died. The torture that was inflicted. The memories that were shorn from a man’s mind, never to be reclaimed.

They took a look at their bedrooms. 

Joanna found herself standing in a simple, plainly decorated room, painted grey with blue trim. A bed was set in the corner of the room, opposite a punching bag that was bolted into both the ceiling and the floor. She looked at the chains, and realized that whatever metal they were made from, it wasn’t steel. Her bathroom was likewise rather nondescript, although she was pleasantly surprised to find that they had stocked her cabinet with natural hair care products. But her inspection of the room was thorough, and she noticed the metal case that lay on her bed the instant she stepped into the room. 

She flipped the latches and opened the case slowly. Inside was a costume, folded neatly, and an unopened letter that had been sealed with a wax stamp. She snorted, bemused by the assumption that she’d wear a costume like one of the X-Men, or the Brotherhood. But looking at it more closely… She didn’t hate the look of it. 

It was predominantly black, with thicker, padded sections along the side and chest in a bright shade of blue. Long sleeves led into fingerless gloves, and a pair of metal knuckles were paired along with it. A glance at the floor beside the bed showed a pair of heavy metal arm guards, which would easily fit over her forearms, as well as a pair of boots, made from the same material. 

She ripped the letter open with her teeth and read it over, a small smirk tugging at her lips. 

_The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. And you, my fine Frenzy, shall rattle the walls of earth, and the foundations of heaven. I do hope you enjoy the knuckles. They’re a special carbonadium-adamantium alloy, specially made just for you. Warm regards, the White Queen._

“God damn,” Joanna laughed to herself. “Now I get why they wear the costumes.”

Next to her room, Scott stood in his. It was identical to Joanna’s in structure, albeit with red trim. At least, he assumed the trim was red. The decoration was minimal, purely the necessities. A chair in the corner, a neatly made bed, and a dresser were all he had been given, and he was more than fine with that. The bathroom came complete with a specialized shower, made from ruby quartz walls and floors. 

Emma really did pay attention to detail. 

On the bed was a chest, identical to the one in Joanna’s room. He popped it open and found that it contained a costume. Primarily black, with padded and ribbed red portions along the sides and chest. There was something else, though. A mask, or helm, rather. Pure silver, in the shape of a human skull. Its eyes were made from ruby quartz, like his visor. He held it in his hands and smirked. 

There was a letter paired with it, from Emma and addressed to him. He read it over once, before tucking it the bottom of his top dresser drawer.

_So much to say to you, Scott, that I could not possibly fit in one letter. I’ve decided to keep it simple, then. You are our peoples’ greatest hope. I truly believe that. I am counting on you, Scott Summers. And maybe, someday, if you, my dreadful Basilisk, survive this war you plan to wage… I’d like to speak to you again. Yours always, The White Queen._

Down the hall, Remy stood in the doorway of his room and grinned with satisfaction. Grey walls, with purple trim, and a large portrait hanging on the wall. A gift from Emma, no doubt. He’d have to repay her someday, he thought to himself. Several decks of playing cards were sitting on a dresser, and his new costume lay on his bed. 

Like Joanna, he wasn’t originally sure if Remy LeBeau was the costume type. But seeing it, he certainly came around on the idea. Mostly black, with purple accents on the padded sections. A collapsible bo staff was paired along with it in the case, as was a long brown coat, and he held his letter in his hand. 

_You were unquestionably a calculated risk, Mister LeBeau. I still believe that you are, to be completely honest. Know that I do not trust you, but… I would like to be proven wrong. Consider yourself a Gambit. Sincerely, The White Queen._

He chuckled to himself and tossed the letter to the side. Gambit did have a nice ring to it.

He peered across the hall, into Nomi’s room, and found the teenager zipping up her costume, already raring to go and get back into the thick of things. Where his and Joanna’s costumes were primarily black with smaller accents, Nomi’s was a bright shade of blue, which nearly matched the color of her hair. The padded sections were, like his, a royal purple. Along the sides of her legs were several metal bladed objects, which was a frightening sight on par with the face of a Sentinel.

He saw that her room was covered in metal. A metal dresser, metal coat hangers and weights, and walls of pure stainless steel. She reached over onto the bed and picked up her letter, and smiled. A small, whispered “hell yeah” escaped her lips. He hadn’t a clue what was written in it, but she did.

_Look kid, I’m gonna be straight with you. Don’t try to levitate yourself right away, and don’t go trying to move bridges until you’re at least twenty five. Magnetism is like a muscle; you have to flex frequently in order to get stronger. If you have to stay under the radar, dye your hair brown and I can promise nobody will notice you. Always keep your feelers out for bullets, and if a guy named Vincent ever tells you he knows who your real father is, just walk away. Don’t let anybody tell you what to do. Oh, and by the by, I’m letting you have my original codename. Knock ‘em dead, Magnetrix. Have fun, The Black Queen._

Angelica walked past their rooms and traced her fingers along the wall. She felt so free without that bracelet on her wrist. Free to be herself, and to fight for her people at long last. It was a dream come true, even if she was now in a strange place with strange people she didn’t know. 

She passed Remy’s room, and saw that one door was open. It wasn’t Scott’s room, or Joanna’s, or Nomi’s. She took a look inside and saw something odd. The rooms were meant to be featureless, except for the members of the team who Emma had known about. Yet this room _was_ decorated. 

The trim on the walls was a bright orange, and there was a framed photograph on the bedside table. The sheets were quilted red and orange, and a chest lay atop them. They hadn’t made a room for anyone else. She was certain of that. For a moment, she wondered if they had mistakenly jotted down a request for a room for Sunfire, but he had been killed before the Hellfire Club was ever approached by the MLF. But as she stepped into the room, as though pulled by some magnetic force, she saw who the photograph was of. 

It was _her_. Her and her father and grandmother, hugging outside one of her high school baseball games. It was before her grandma had died, before life was full of fear and uncertainty. It was one week before her powers manifested for the first time. She looked so happy in the picture. Looking at it again, she felt tears begin to well up in her eyes, and she let them flow freely. 

She didn’t have to open the chest on the bed to know what was inside, but she wanted to see it. The yellow suit, with red accents. There was a hand written letter for her as well, just like the ones that _she_ had written under Emma’s dictation. But as she melted the wax seal with her thumb and pulled the letter from the envelope, Angelica saw that it was written in Emma’s handwriting. 

_Angelica. I want you to know how truly proud of you I am, my dear. Though I may not have shown it, I have cared for you, not just as a teacher would her student, but as a mother would her child. I have loved you as the child I could never have, ever since you first came under my care. And while it is with a heavy heart that I bid you farewell, I want you to know that I believe in you. I believe in your ability to set this world ablaze, my dearest Firestar. Eternally proud, Emma._

“Damnit, Miss Frost.” 

She smiled softly to herself as tears splashed onto the paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, don't forget to leave kudos and comment!


	9. Shake, Rattle, Roll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait!

Valerie Cooper peered through the one-way mirror and into a singularly occupied interrogation room. Inside, scowling and struggling helplessly against his power dampening collar, was a teenage boy. He had deep brown skin and brown hair that hadn’t been cut in quite some time. His bangs hung over his eyes as he grunted and seethed in frustration. His name was Julio Esteban Richter. He had been arrested through the valiant and inspiring efforts of a local police officer. The man would no doubt be awarded a medal for his brave public service. The boy would no doubt rot in ONE lockup. 

After Val was done questioning him, of course.

It had become almost routine, over the past several weeks. The FBI and ONE had decided on a sort of protocol, one which satisfied both federal agencies. When a Mutant was apprehended, they would be passed along to ONE. However, if said Mutant had a possible connection to a known domestic terrorist group, then the FBI would send their agents to perform an interrogation before ONE processed the individual. 

She had interviewed nearly ten such individuals since the Mutant Liberation Front first appeared in New Orleans two months ago. Val had been to San Antonio, Lubbock, Rochester, Philadelphia, Omaha, Richmond, Albany, Raleigh, and now… San Francisco. She was a busy woman. Among her fellow agents, she had begun to develop a reputation as something not unlike a Mutant specialist. Rumors quickly swirled that she was being given offers to hop over to ONE. She was quick to dispel those rumors, though. She was just doing her job. 

Her job, which was currently to get answers out of a sixteen year old who claimed to have been working on behalf of the MLF. 

“Are we really about to interrogate a kid?” The man beside her asked. He held a cup of coffee in one hand and took a long sip from it. His name was John Silvercloud, and he had been assigned as her partner the day before they flew off to San Antonio for their first interrogation. She still wasn’t entirely a fan of him. He was right far too often for her tastes.

“He single handedly caused the collapse of a medical research facility, so yes we are,” Val said simply. 

“It’s destruction of private property, not murder. He even said when the local PD arrived, he waited until everyone had evacuated before he knocked the lab over.”

“Are you really devil’s advocating for a Mutant?” Val asked, shooting her partner an icy glare.

John shrugged. “Just saying, the kid isn’t Magneto or anything.”

“They all get their start somehow,” Val mused, as her narrow gaze shifted back to Richtor. “We should get this over with quickly. I want to get back to Quantico as soon as possible so I can finish The Sopranos.”

John raised his eyebrows and stifled a laugh. Val looked back at him, confused, before he commented. 

“Didn’t that end like twelve years ago?”

“Not all of us watched prestige television in high school, John.”

He regarded her for a moment, as the wheels turned in his head. Suddenly, his eyes lit up and he laughed openly. 

“Don’t tell me… You were an anime kid in school, weren’t you?” The furious, withering glare she fired at him answered the question. John continued to laugh. “Oh man, what was your fix? Naruto? Sailor Moon?”

“...Gundam Wing,” She admitted in a terse tone. Her partner doubled over in laughter, and she sighed. Children. She worked with children. “Look, are we doing this or not?” She snapped. 

“Yeah… Yeah, alright,” John said, his fit subsiding for the moment. Still, he wiped a joyful tear from his eye. “You wanna rock, paper, scissors for it?”

She nodded, and threw paper. He threw scissors. 

She opened the door to the interrogation room and strode in with the utmost of confidence. The teenager scowled at the sight of her, and immediately launched into a string of obscenities that would have easily shocked and offended her mother. Val, however, had heard far worse in her lifetime.

But when he ended on a threat that the MLF was going to break him out and set him free, Val couldn’t help but laugh. 

“We know you’re not working for Scott Summers,” She told him plainly. He looked at her, thrown by the accusation. 

“Yeah I am!” He insisted, growing angrier, more defiant. “I’m part of it, and they’re gonna tear this whole place down to get me.”

Val chuckled. “Do you know how _I_ know you’re lying, Julio? Because the Mutant Liberation Front has struck dozens of times in the past few weeks. Almost every other day, really. But it’s only ever the five of them.”

She let silence fill the air, and stared at him, all to make the situation as uncomfortable as possible. So much easier to get answers when people were uncomfortable. Teenagers especially. They just couldn’t _stand_ being put in an awkward situation.

“And we know who each and every one of those five is,” She lied. They knew who Nomi Blume was, of course. Scott Summers wasn’t absolutely confirmed to be the ringleader, but he was the most likely option. The other three, however, were still a mystery to them. But she _did_ know that none of them had Julio’s particular ability. 

“They just recruited me,” Julio argued, his voice bitter, filled with contempt for the woman in front of him. “It was my first mission.”

“See, that brings me to point number two. The lab you attacked was owned by Alchemax. The Mutant Liberation Front only targets ONE and Trask Industries. They’re consistent about that, and we know why. But unlike those two, Alchemax doesn’t pose a risk to your kind. They have no reason to attack it.”

Julio shot out of his chair, knocking it to the ground, though he was still chained to the table by his cuffs. His nostrils flared, and he stared daggers at Val, who didn’t so much as react to the outburst. 

“Alchemax is trying to “cure” Mutants!” He spat. “That’s why I took them down. I’m not gonna sit around on my ass and let those bastards _sterilize_ us!”

“Check your sources, kid,” Val sighed. “Alchemax curing Mutants is a hoax. That lab was for cancer research. Research that you destroyed.”

He paused, and she could see him processing the information. She hoped it would pacify him; get him to calm down and sign a confession so they didn’t have to deal with a trial. Instead, he just got angrier. 

“I don’t buy it. You’re lying,” He said, eyes narrowing as he leveled the accusation at Val. “Cops like you lie all the goddamn time.”

“The only one lying here is you, Julio.” Val shook her head dismissively. “What I want to know is why you’re wasting our time. You’re not working for Summers or Magneto. You’re not even working for the X-Men. I’m sure you think you were doing something brave and heroic. But you weren’t. You just gave us another reason to have Sentinels patrolling the streets.”

Julio fell silent. His eyes cast downwards, his shoulders slumped, and his hair hung over his face. Val felt a pang of… _something_ in her heart for the boy. Pity? Sympathy? Put in his shoes, would she have done what he did? No. He was just another example of the innate destructive urges his kind were saddled with. 

“Come on, kid. Just sign a confession so we don’t have to go through a whole trial. It’ll be easier on you, and your parents.”

Julio glared at her through his curtain of brown locks. What parents? They were both dead. He had been living on a friend’s couch up until the day he went to Alchemax. But he was damned if he was going to make his incarceration any easier on the bigoted bastards in charge of the criminal justice system. 

Several tense, silent moments passed. Val crossed her arms and stared Julio down, but the teenager wouldn’t budge. Instead, she actually found _herself_ beginning to sweat from the heat. The Californian sunshine had been hostile at best when she was outside, but the building was much cooler inside. She wondered if the air conditioning had broken down as she tugged at her canary colored blouse and grey suit jacket. 

But then she heard a knock on the door, and John slipped his head into the room. There was a panicked look on his face, and his words sent a chill down Val’s spine.

“Val? You gotta take a look at this.”

John never interrupted her during an interrogation. She shot one last look at Julio, who seemed as confused as she was, before she joined John outside the room. 

“What’s up?” She asked.

“The MLF is outside.”

“I’m sorry, _what?!_ ” 

She followed him into the hall and to the front of the building. Outside, standing on a floating manhole cover, was the leader of the Mutant Liberation Front. Complete in his black and red uniform and silver skull-shaped helmet, Basilisk stared down the entire police station’s worth of officers… None of whom were armed. Instead, their guns were all floating in the air, and aimed directly at their heads. The scene gave her an eerie sense of deja vu. 

“I’m going to assume this is the last of you,” Basilisk said with a contemptuous chuckle. His voice reverberated, slightly altered by the mask he wore. At his side sat Nomi Blume, who dangled her legs off the edge of their makeshift ride and was heavily concentrating on the firepower she was leveling. 

“Wh-what do you want?” Val asked, as her own gun slipped free from its holster. She swallowed nervously as its barrel pressed against her forehead. The fact that all the guns were trembling in place, as though Nomi was doing her utmost to keep them from going off, only served to instill an even greater sense of dread in the captive police department. 

“I’m sure Magnetrix could do with a glass of water,” He said. She didn’t have to see under his mask to know he was smiling as he teased her. “No, I think we’re perfectly content to just sit… And wait.”

“Until what?” John asked. He and Val exchanged a brief glance, both seeming to agree that they would try to glean whatever information they could, in case they managed to survive this. 

Suddenly, an explosion rocked the building, and a small plume of purple-black smoke rose up from the building. Specifically, from where Val and John had been just minutes ago. The interrogation room’s roof had been blasted to nothing, and a woman in red and yellow rose up, carrying Julio Richtor in her arms. 

“Until _that_ ,” Nomi said gleefully. She waved her hand, and all of the guns lightly butted their owners in the faces before scattering on the ground. She focused on projecting a magnetic shield around Basilisk and herself as they rejoined their teammates; the redheaded woman and a man in a long brown coat. A pink tear opened in the sky above the police station, and all five vanished into it before it shut behind them. 

Val was never going to hear the end of this. 

*******************************************************************************************************************************************

Julio looked around in shock as he stumbled into the renovated Weapon X facility. The air was cool and almost sterile, not at all like the hot, sweltering air of his hometown. He stumbled on his own two feet, before being caught by the strong, well worn hand of the fifth member of the MLF, who had been waiting for them to arrive.

“Don’t lose your feet, kid,” Frenzy snorted. 

“Where am I?” He asked, taking in his surroundings. He felt like he was going to hurl from the sudden shift. He hardly even noticed the pink-skinned, elf-eared woman in green who was leaning against the wall. 

“We don’t exactly have a name for it yet,” Basilisk said. He pulled his helmet off and slipped a pair of sunglasses on before opening his eyes. “But we’re always open to suggestions.”

It soon became apparent that Julio wasn’t the MLF’s only guest at the moment. As Nomi wandered off towards the kitchens in search of lunch, and as Remy slipped out to go for a walk in the woods, a college aged girl with bobbed black hair approached from the hallway. 

“Um, who are you?” Julio asked her. “And who are _you?_ ” He asked the pink elf.

“Call me Blink,” The elf said in a light, ethereal voice. She was dressed as a civilian, as was the black haired girl. “I’m just here for transport.”

“And I’m Xi’an,” The other girl said with a slight smile. She shook Julio’s hand, and he noticed her prosthetic leg as he looked her over. “I’ve been here for about two weeks now,” She explained. 

“Xi’an, I’m sure you can show Julio around the place while Joanna and I spar in the Danger Room,” Basilisk said. Xi’an nodded earnestly, and waved him off. 

“Wait, so, what’s going on?” Julio asked Xi’an. “Where are we, exactly?”

“We’re in the Mutant Liberation Front’s home base,” She explained. 

“Do I… Live here now?”

“If you want to.”

“You wanted to?”

“Yes. Not everyone does, though. Some ask to go be with the Brotherhood, or with the X-Men. If you want to stay here, though-”

“I do. And I wanna join up, too,” Julio said with a dangerous glint in his eye. “I wanna be part of the MLF.”

Xi’an laughed, and shook her head. “You’ll have to talk to Mister Summers about that. In the meantime, why don’t I show you your room?”

As Xi’an gave Julio the grand tour, grateful to have another roommate, Scott and Joanna took the elevator down into the complex’s sub-level. Joanna split off to go to the Danger Room, where she’d no doubt spar against the old reprogrammed Mk1 Sentinel they had gotten a hold of, while Scott made his way towards the war room. A brief detour, before he'd join his teammate. 

The room, which was far less imposing than its name, was the area that he’d have to pass through in order to get to Cerebra; another of their benefactor’s wonderful gifts, albeit one that only she (and now Xi’an) was capable of using. But that wasn’t Scott’s destination. No, he approached a computer console that was set into one of the war room’s walls, and he brought up a direct video feed to their benefactor. 

She blinked into view, fanning herself in all her regalia, and cooed at the sight of her dreadful little Basilisk. He was her favorite, most valued soldier, after all. 

“Hullo, Scott,” Emma said as she flicked her fan shut. He tried to ignore the fact that she was… entertaining “guests” at the moment. They were rather scantily clad guests, at that. 

“Emma,” He said flatly. “We have the Richtor boy you asked about. I wanted to know, though… Why the interest in him? You normally let us pick our own targets.”

“True, true. But I believe the boy was onto something, and I wanted to speak to him at the soonest possible moment.”

“You mean Alchemax?”

“I do,” She began, before blushing and chastising one of her guests for so rudely interrupting her. “I do, and I’ll be visiting tonight in order to plunder his memories. There may be more there than even he noticed.”

“I’ll be waiting,” He said with a thin smile, before cutting the line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alchemax, up to something nefarious? Say it ain't so, Emma! 
> 
> As always, don't forget to kudos and comment!


	10. Rust Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YptBbpmFouM
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this one! It's a longer chapter than normal, so yay.

Joanna stood alone in the Danger Room. She bound her wrists and hands in athletic tape slowly, as she kept her eyes on the far wall of the room. A large, inert figure stared back; its eyes were dull and lifeless, and it posed no threat. Not yet, anyways. She didn’t know how Emma had managed to acquire it, but the Mk1 Sentinel was an opponent she loved to fight. No matter how badly she destroyed it, it was always so easy to put back together again. By this point, it was equal parts grey steel to its original purple and blue shell. In fact, calling it a proper Mk1 wasn’t quite accurate anymore. It was something else. Something that belonged to her. A sparring partner that thought it could be her exterminator. 

“Bring it on, Rover,” She said with a sneer and a pounding of her fists. The voice command was picked up by the room’s equipment, and the Sentinel’s eyes sparked to life. 

It lurched forward, ambling on legs of decade old steel. It raised one hand, and the bullets that fired from its palm bounced harmlessly off of Joanna’s chest as she approached it casually. A glitched out, distorted voice ordered her to surrender as she raised her fists. 

**”M-M-MutANT IdEntifiEd. H-H-H-H-H-H-Halt MutANT.”**

“No thanks,” Joanna said. She delivered an uppercut which sent the eight foot tall robot reeling backwards. It caught itself with an outstretched foot, then wound up and punched Joanna right back. 

Its heavy steel fist slammed into her head hard enough for her to feel it. A grin crossed Joanna’s face, and she retaliated with another punch of her own. Back and forth, the two of them traded blows. She knew that, at any moment, she could end it. All she had to do was give a voice command, or knock the head off of the outdated machine. But she wasn’t looking to end the fight. She was looking to blow off steam. 

As she sparred with the Sentinel, Joanna’s mind wandered. Through the halls of the sublevel of the Weapon X complex, towards Scott. No doubt he was talking to the White Queen at that very moment. He had told her as much as they split off outside the Danger Room. 

Fist met fist, and the Mk1’s hand crumpled. 

She didn’t know what to make of the White Queen. The woman was opulent to the degree of annoyance, and she spoke about everything, even their own potential extinction, as though it was beneath her. Why did Scott put his trust in Emma? 

With a stomp, she snapped off the front half of the Mk1’s foot. 

How far back did those two go? What exactly was Scott’s history with the Hellfire Club? Why was he so willing to believe that a woman who willingly put one of those damn power tracking bracelets around her wrist wouldn’t betray them? Joanna was supposed to be his second in command, so why wasn’t she part of those private conversations between Scott and Emma?

A backhand knocked off the lower portion of the Mk1’s jaw and sent it skittering across the floor. 

Why did she care?

The door to the Danger Room slid open with a gentle whooshing sound, and Scott stepped into the room. Gone was his silver, ruby eyed skull helmet. Instead, he wore the same pair of sunglasses that he wore when they first met. He was smiling, ever so slightly, as he approached the center of the room. 

“I think Rover’s going to need some maintenance after this,” He oh so casually remarked. 

“Tell Emma she should get us a Mk2, so we don’t have to keep repairing this one,” Joanna said as she pushed the struggling Sentinel onto its back. It twitched on the floor, unable to even lift itself anymore. “I can’t even feel the bullets.”

“The rest of us can.” Scott looked at the Sentinel, as Joanna’s eyes flicked to a scar on the back of Scott’s wrist, which was incredibly familiar to the former soldier. A bullet had grazed the spot years ago, before he ever met her. From how it was stretched and distorted, it was possible it was something that had happened when he was still growing. He had been fighting this war longer than anyone, and it showed. 

“End program,” Joanna said. The Sentinel’s eyes blinked off, and its motions ceased. As its head lolled back onto the floor with a thunk, she crossed her arms in front of her chest and sighed. “So what’s her royal majesty want?” She asked.

“She’s going to drop by tonight, after Julio has settled in a bit. She wants to see what he knows about Alchemax.” Scott watched as Joanna made her way towards the door, and he followed after her.

“You think those cure rumors are true?” She asked as she peeled the tape from her hands and tossed it into a trash can outside of the room. The simple thought of someone, somehow, being able to _cure_ Mutation was absurd. Or at least, that’s what they had always assumed. The genetics were just far too complicated for anyone to really understand what even caused the X gene to exist, and going so far as to find a way to suppress or remove it entirely? It seemed like a bigot’s dream, and little more. 

It sent a chill down her spine. 

“Hard to say. She thinks he may have seen more than he realizes, so she wants to look through his memories of the lab attack to see if there was something Julio may not have noticed.”

Joanna snorted and rolled her eyes. Telepaths. As if Frost’s demeanor didn’t unsettle her enough, she just had to have been born with the gift that was the root of humankind’s fear of them. And yet they relied on that Mutant ability in order to track Mutants in need of aid, and to find out what their human oppressors were keeping from them. 

“How long until she gets here?” She asked as the two of them walked back into the elevator and waited for the doors to close. Her stomach flipped as it carried them up to the surface; she wondered if it was common for people to have that reaction in elevators. 

“Blink is going to go and get her at around seven.” 

“And what’s on for dinner?”

“Remy is making gumbo.” 

“Fuck yes,” Joanna said with a laugh. The thought of Remy’s cooking managed to make up for having to deal with Emma again. 

Above their heads, in the kitchen, Remy and Angelica were busy at work. It had become almost routine, since the five members of the MLF moved into the facility, for the two of them to prepare dinner. It gave them, as the two members of the MLF who were unexpected additions to Scott’s roster, an opportunity to grow closer. 

“How many kids do you think we gon’ get runnin’ around dese halls?” Remy asked as he leaned against the counter. His messy brown hair framed his face perfectly, and his eyes burned gently even now, away from the fight. 

“We’ve got space for dozens, if not more,” Angelica said. She had hung up her wig in her room after the mission ended, and so only a thin, burgeoning layer of red hair covered her scalp. Remy had yet to pry about it, and she was thankful for that. “And if we ever reach full capacity, Miss Frost has plans for another site.”

Remy spun a container of chili powder in his hand before adding it to the simmering dish on the stove. Angelica shook her head and laughed at the flourish. 

“So…” Remy began, as his eyes flicked towards his sous chef.

“So...?”

“How does a girl like you start workin’ at a place like de Hellfire Club?”

Angelica paused, and chewed on the inside of her lip. Remy looked at her expectantly, so she sighed and answered his question honestly. 

“I needed money, and they don’t have a problem hiring Mutants. And… She taught me how to use my powers safely.”

Remy nodded in understanding. “I get it. First time I used my powers, I blew up my girlfriend’s pool table.”

“Yikes.”

“Hah, yeah. Her daddy chased me outta de place with a gun after dat. Haven’t seen her in years now. I wonder, sometimes, if she’s doin’ okay.”

“What was her name?” Angelica asked. Remy caught her eyes in his own and smiled. There was a wistful look on his face as he recalled memories of a young blonde girl with dimples and freckles. 

“Bella Donna. Me an’ her thought we were gonna take on de world together.”

“Well… You are, for what that’s worth,” Angelica said quietly. For a moment, she wasn’t certain whether he had even heard her. But then Remy laughed and nodded, and gave her a gentle side-hug. 

The conversation fell away, and they found themselves entering a comfortable silence as they focused on finishing dinner. But still, Angelica felt a tighter connection growing between her and Remy. He wasn’t so much of a stranger to her anymore. In fact, she was all too eager to work with him in the field again.

“Does Julio have any allergies?” She wondered aloud as she pulled a loaf of cornbread from the oven. 

“Don’t think anybody stopped to ask the boy, chere.” Remy slipped past her and grabbed a bowl of deveined shrimp to toss into the stewing mixture in the pan. 

Angelica frowned. She paused, looking at the pan of bread for a moment. “I’m gonna go ask him. I don’t want to see him go into anaphylactic shock on his first day here just because we didn’t know he was allergic to seafood.”

Remy smiled slightly as he stirred their cooking dinner. As Angelica left the room to go find Julio, he gave her one parting message. “Best we can do is take dese kids as dey come, and try to do right by dem. We do dat? We win dis whole revolution.”

By the time that everyone had gathered in the mess hall, the Cajun Mutant had finished preparing their meal. Eight Mutants sat around the long, rectangular metal table. The scent of warm, hearty food filled the air. It felt as though it had already been a day since Julio was sprung out of lockup, rather than just a few hours. Scott and Joanna sat across from one another, with Nomi sandwiched between Scott and Remy. Mirroring their positions were Angelica, Xi’an, Julio and Clarice. 

As they all began to eat, Julio looked across the table, towards the members of the MLF. “I just wanted to say thanks. You know, for helping me out today. You guys are fucking heroes, man.”

Scott smiled and nodded. “We’re a tribe. Every Mutant owes it to their kind to lend a hand. I’d expect the same of any of you if I were in need.”

“Pfft. I had to rescue myself,” Nomi snorted. “Get on my level.”

“We can’t all be national criminal sensations,” Angelica shot back with a smirk. Her wig once again covered her growing hair, with only Remy having seen what was underneath. 

“Actually, I’m pretty sure we are,” Joanna said as she brought a spoon up to her lips. It was true. If any of them were to look at the tv, they’d see an almost constant news cycle about the new Mutant terrorist organization. Their names were already infamous. Basilisk. Frenzy. Magnetrix. Gambit. Firestar. Monsters one and all, who were out to get the innocent young human children and destroy the police state. 

And yet, to others, like Julio and Xi’an, they had already become saviors. In just a few short weeks, with a few chosen rescues and tactical strikes, they were a source of hope for the Mutants of the country. 

Suddenly, a series of high pitched trills rang out. Scott snapped to attention and looked to the room’s exits. Joanna tensed, and prepared for a fight. Blink, however, simply pulled out a burner phone and held it to her ear. The ringing stopped the instant she did so.

“Ma’am? Right. I’m sorry, I lost track of time. You got it.”

The pink-skinned elf closed the phone and pushed it back into her pocket. With a quick flick of her wrist, a tear appeared in space a few feet away from the dining Mutants. The air itself ripped open, and air was sucked into the void. As the pink glow of the tear began to fade, it was replaced by a vision that was familiar to the MLF’s core members. 

Emma Frost stepped through the gap in space, from the Hellfire Club lounge into the mess hall. The tear closed behind her, and she nodded at Blink, who sat back down. 

Julio gawked at the woman; thrown by the sight of her. He had expected a woman in skintight white leather, or maybe lingerie and a fur cape. Instead, he found himself staring up at a woman over ten years his senior, and who was dressed in a powder blue gown that belonged in an era of French monarchy. Her golden hair was pulled back, and a small tricorn hat was perched atop her head. She looked like something out of a history textbook, rather than the dominatrix super villain he had imagined. 

“You must be Mister Richter,” She said as a thin, confident smile graced her face. “Or would you prefer Julio?”

Julio stood and looked Emma up and down again, still thrown by the woman’s imposing presence. “Julio,” He muttered after a pause. “Basilisk said you’re gonna go looking through my memories or something?”

“That would be correct.”

“You really think I was right about them trying to cure us?” He asked.

“I do,” She swore.

“Is it gonna hurt?” He asked.

“Not one bit,” She promised.

Julio looked down, and a torn expression etched itself across his young face. Emma looked into his eyes and her own expression softened, growing sympathetic to the teenager. She knew what was holding him back. She couldn’t blame him for the reservation.

_”I will only see what you wish for me to see. I promise you, I will not go snooping about your personal life. Do we have a deal?”_

Julio swallowed his worries, and nodded his head. Emma smiled, and pressed her gloved hand against his temple. His eyes shut in tandem with her own, and she entered his mind with as much grace and poise as when she entered the room just a few moments earlier.

“Can I just be her when I’m older?” Nomi asked Joanna around a spoonful of shrimp.

*************************************************************************************************************

Julio’s eyes opened, and he found himself back in the Alchemax lab. It was the very moment that he kicked the front door open. A trail of shattered earth lay in his wake outside, and inside security was already beginning to scramble to attention. 

This time, however, Julio did not stand alone. 

Emma was there, at his side. A firm hand gripped his shoulder, and he saw that the memory was frozen in time. It was crystal clear to him as well. Every mote of dust that hung in the air, and every crack in the linoleum floor stood out as bright as day. He looked back up, and saw a security guard just to his side raise a gun. Not a taser, or anything so pacifying. It was a pistol, and it was readied with lethal intent. 

Julio raised his hand, and the floor swelled and burst beneath the guard. His footing slipped, and he dropped his gun. Before he could reach for it, a spike of earth shot from the ground and into the wall above the guard, holding him down. Julio knelt down and grabbed the guard’s radio. Exactly as he did the first time around, Julio raised it to his lips, clicked the button, and spoke into it.

“The Mutant Liberation Front is here. Get out of the building now, before it comes down on all your heads.”

He looked to Emma as the memory played out, and she smiled with satisfaction. But her eyes were also searching for something, even as Julio walked further and further into the lab. He passed by technicians and doctors in lab coats as they fled for safety; his stride casual and rather excited. He had been eager to strike back at the humans who abused him for so long. 

It carried on, exactly as he had experienced it. Attacking guards with the intent to disarm them, rather than to cause overt harm. Scaring researchers into fleeing. Going room to room in order to make sure that nobody stayed behind. He had wanted to destroy the place, not to hurt anyone. And he hadn’t, as much as ONE and the FBI liked to pretend otherwise. 

Emma kept an eye on each and every scene as they unfolded. From time to time, she’d ask Julio for more information. Did he hear anyone talking about their work? Did he catch any glimpses of personnel who didn’t seem to belong, like ONE agents and the like? Did he, perhaps, find any actual evidence of cancer research?

All of her questions were answered with a resounding no.

But as they entered the final lab, deep in the heart of the building, Emma raised her hand. The memory, which had been unfolding in slow motion, came to a complete halt. Julio found that he was no longer bound to his tracks; he was free to move about just as Emma was. 

The White Queen was, at that moment, walking by a row of computer monitors. Each one was frozen. The information displayed on them was accurate, albeit not anything Julio would have been capable of recalling on his own. Even someone with perfect recall likely wouldn’t have been able to accurately remember what had been picked up on the fringes of their mind. But inside of Julio’s mind, Emma was more than just an observer. She was practically walking through a library’s worth of information that Julio didn’t even know he had stored away. 

“Facebook… Minesweeper… Hormone studies…” Emma muttered aloud as she passed by each computer monitor. “Oh hello there,” She whispered to herself as she came to a stop in front of one setup. She leaned over to get a better look, and Julio joined her. 

“What is it?” He asked. 

“Emails,” She said simply. “For future reference, always look into emails first. It’s much simpler to get a direct look at a conversation rather than pouring over mind numbing data sheets.” 

Her eyes scanned across the length of the page, though her face remained expressionless. Julio tried to get a look for himself, but by the time he craned his head to see what had been written, Emma was moving on to another computer. Julio looked over the email, and he furrowed his brow.

“Office of National Emergency?” He read aloud from the address line. “They were talking to the fucking feds!”

“Quite,” Emma said as she examined another monitor. “And there’s something here as well, in fact. Ignoring the porn tab this fellow had open, they were also studying the X Gene. And I doubt it was for cancer research like they claimed.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because…” Emma stood up straight and looked Julio dead in the eye. He looked at the monitor and saw three professional looking headshots. A trio of smiling faces, with their names printed underneath. “I don’t believe that cancer research entails killing three Mutant test subjects with failed drug cocktails.”

Julio stared at her for a moment, but when the shock of her words faded, his eyes narrowed. He knew it. The rumors had been right after all, and he knew without a doubt that he had done the right thing in bringing this place to the ground. His only regret, at this point, was waiting for the researchers to leave before he did so. 

Three Mutants. Three people, with names and stories to them. Three people who had their whole lives ahead of them, but who had been tricked into participating in a bogus study on cancer treatments. Three people who had been tricked into dying at the hands of humans who sought to exterminate their kind. Three people who were seen as a cancer by humankind.

Three Mutants who the MLF would be sure to avenge.

“These fucking _monsters_ ,” He spat. His fists trembled, and the building began to quiver and shake beneath his feet. 

“I couldn’t agree more, young man,” Emma said sadly as the memory came crashing down around them. “I couldn’t agree more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: Alchemax, Kavita Rao, and Bolivar Trask!
> 
> Don't forget to kudos and comment!


	11. Tangled Up Puppet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay! Life and writers block managed to put up a big wall between me and this fic, but after I changed around my endgame plans for this fic, I managed to reignite my fire for it. Hopefully updates will be a bit more frequent from now on!
> 
> The chapter title this time comes from Tangled Up Puppet by Harry Chapin! The title applies to the chapter a bit better than the lyrics do, although those still apply rather well to Scott in the fic overall I think. Either way, it's a good song!

Nomi stood on the street corner. Her hands were jammed firmly in the pockets of her hoodie and her eyes were screwed shut in concentration. Joanna stood beside her, and she kept her eyes on the young girl in her care. If she were to ever say that she was watching out for Nomi, then obviously the teenager would run right into traffic to spite her. But regardless, that’s exactly what she was doing. 

“How many?” Joanna asked quietly. She glanced down the street, in the direction of faintly heard sirens. She breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing that it was just an ambulance heading towards a nearby hospital.

“I think… Two?” Nomi guessed. She tilted her head and squeezed her eyes tighter. “No, three.”

“You sure?” Joanna looked down at the thirteen year old girl, and saw her nostrils flare. 

“Yeah, I’m _sure_. Jeez.” Nomi opened her eyes and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. The chill of the fall air was starting to bring her under the weather, which certainly wasn’t making the task in front of her any easier. But as the team’s only surefire way to predict how many sentinels were in an area, it was a trick she’d no doubt be called upon to perform many times in the future. Scott was a jerk like that.

“What version are they?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Nomi complained. She sat down on the curb and ran a hand through her hair. It was hard enough for her to extend her feelers out to the block _past_ where they were standing, even harder to identify how many lumbering robotic men were milling about. To then go even further, and know whether they were Mk I, II, III or IV was asking far too much of her. At least, it would be, if she were running with any crew other than the MLF and their perfectionist leaders.

Joanna sighed, and shook her head. She hadn’t known that taking part in a rebellion against the US government would involve this much babysitting, especially not with someone like Nomi being her charge. But Joanna had, in the time they’d known each other, picked up a few tricks of her own, which came in handy when she had to motivate the girl.

“You know, I heard that Magneto once figured out Colossus had joined the X-Men from the moment they first landed on Asteroid M. And he’s only, what, six foot four? The smallest sentinels are nearly four feet bigger than that. The biggest are practically twice his height.”

A sly grin flashed across Joanna’s face as Nomi shut her eyes again and held her palms out, facing the open air. Her fingers twitched slightly, a few degrees here and there, and she bit her tongue gently as she focused.

“They’re big,” She whispered. 

“How big?” Joanna asked, laying a gentle, yet firm, hand on Nomi’s shoulder. 

“Bigger than Rover, smaller than the one in New Orleans? I think?” Nomi guessed.

“About the same size as the one you took down when we first met?”

Nomi nodded. Joanna watched as, seemingly, the connection fell apart, and Nomi fell to her side. Thankfully, the older woman was already there to catch her, to support her and hold her up. She wrapped an arm around Nomi and smiled softly to herself as the girl stirred against her. She knew Nomi could do it, even if Nomi herself hadn’t. 

“C’mon kid. Let’s get you a sandwich,” She whispered as she helped Nomi to her feet. 

“Burger,” Nomi mumbled into Joanna’s jacket. The older woman chuckled and shook her head. Fine, she thought. A burger. 

——————————————————————————————————————————

“It’s simply divine, isn’t it?” 

She smiled, devilishly so, and traced her white-gloved finger along the elaborately carved wooden frame of the painting. Bolivar smiled politely and nodded in agreement, even as the subject flew over his head entirely. He never was much of an art person, but the… woman… who was entertaining his company certainly was. 

The room in which he was seated, a small, intimate place with a crackling fire and polished floors that were spotless enough to reflect his own face back at him, was empty save for the two of them. If anyone else were to enter, it would feel almost cramped. It was similar enough in aesthetics to the lounge in which he typically met the Hellfire Club’s inner circle, but it was far, far different in feeling. It was cozier, for sure, and infinitely more relaxing, even with the priceless works of art that hung from the walls. She had told him, as he was led through the club’s halls, that this was her own private study. He could believe that, what with the stark white furniture and the antique writing desk that was nestled up against the wall. 

“It’s lovely, Miss Frost,” He said, affirming her question even though he knew as well as she did that it was rhetorical. These were, however, the sorts of games that they had to play. Even with her kind. “It must have cost quite a penny.”

“Normally, yes. Lucky me, I managed to get it for a _steal_ ,” She gushed, tossing a flirtatious smile his way, paired with a wink behind her fan. “Sebastian left it for me as a gift before he and Selene eloped to Poland.”

“That’s very generous of him,” Bolivar said. Emma continued to smile in his direction as she drifted away from the painting and towards a chaise lounge. He coughed nervously as she took a seat. “I’ve got to say, I’m still rather… well, _surprised_ by how Sebastian and the others left like they did. They were very helpful in funding my initial research into sentinels.”

“Believe me, Bolivar, no one was as surprised as myself! It was surreal, discovering that they had decided to leave the Hellfire Club just like that. Why, they hadn’t even _discussed_ the matter with me beforehand!”

Bolivar nodded again, and glanced away from her penetrating gaze. It was like staring into the sun, trying to look at her. He didn’t consider himself to be a meek man, but there was something about her, about most of her people, rather, that made him feel the need to avert his eyes after more than a few moments. He wasn’t hateful, as he told himself time and time again. He just wasn’t quite so _comfortable_ around them as he was with _normal_ people. Emma understood that, of course. After all, she was one of the good ones. She understood the importance of his work, of what he did. That was why he was here. 

“I just wanted to make sure, Miss Frost, that our contract isn’t _threatened_ by all this Mutant Liberation Front nonsense.”

“You mean how a group of five Mutants managed to destroy one of your newest sentinel models?”

He coughed again. Of course she cut straight to the point. He scratched at his cheek and laughed quietly from the anxiety of it all. 

“W-Well, you know how these things go, Emma. Every model is an upgrade from the previous version, but we’re constantly discovering new flaws in our creations. I can assure you, the Mark V sentinel is being overseen personally, by me. We have an array of new features that’ll be implemented, all of which are designed to help it deal with multiple threats at a time.”

Her playful, teasing smile faded, replaced by a look of concern. She folded up her fan and placed it on the lap of her ivory skirt, and looked directly at Bolivar. 

“These new features… How _lethal_ are they, Bolivar?”

“Emma, I know that you have your reasons for concern, but you have to believe me when I say that-”

“That Mutants are too dangerous to be met with anything short of death rays?” She asked sharply. He could practically feel the words dig into his chest like talons. 

“Not all of them,” He said with hands raised in defense. “Only the ones who are _dangerous_. Mutants like this Basilisk fellow, or Magneto. The kind who would hurt innocent people. Even the Mark IV sentinels are programmed to seek pacifistic solutions first and foremost. That won’t change with the Mark V. You have my word.”

Emma looked away from Bolivar, towards the snapping fire, and mulled over his promises in silence. His gaze flicked briefly towards the blinking green bracelet that hung from her wrist, which she fiddled with gently, sliding it around in a circle as she thought on the matter. After several moments of heady silence, she looked to him once again and smiled sweetly. 

“Bolivar…”

“Yes?”

_”You are going to do your damndest to remove all lethal weaponry from future models of those terrible robots of yours. You are going to focus on nonviolent means of pacification, such as nets and sleeping gas. You will, as soon as you arrive at your office tomorrow, destroy all blueprints that pertain to lethal options, and you will forbid your employees from designing their own.”_

Bolivar nodded lazily as Emma’s telepathic commands penetrated his mind and wormed their way into the deepest layers of his psyche, deep enough that he would assume they were his own. They rooted themselves inside, and attached themselves to his self-delusions of only wanting the best for what he believed to be an inherently inferior species. The cold smile on Emma’s face grew wider as he accepted her thoughts as his own. 

_”What’s more, you will put any concerns about the whereabouts of the Hellfire Club’s previous owners out of mind. That does not matter to you, and it never did. You are glad that I am running things now, as I and I alone am responsible for the working relationship between your company and mine.”_

Again, he nodded. Again, he understood. Again, he accepted the telepathic instructions as nothing short of hardened fact. 

_”Finally, after this meeting is over, you are to head straight home, where you will tell your children that you love them, Mutant warts and all. Oh, and while you’re at it, you’ll throw away that hideous yellow tie. Blues and blacks only from this point on. I can’t believe I have to give fashion advice to bigots, yet here we are…”_

With a flick of her fan, Bolivar came to once more, completely unaware of the mental domination that had just taken place. Emma smiled at him and fanned herself, and he smiled in return. 

“So, er, where were we? I just drew a complete blank,” He sheepishly admitted, rubbing his arm. Emma, for her part, simply tittered playfully and pawed at the air. 

“You were telling me about your new sentinel plans, and I was asking about the lethality of the newer models…”

“Ah, right!” The light in his eyes sparked to life, and a smile spread across his aging face. “Lethal options are going right out the window, of course. I was thinking about a mechanised system that would fire weighted nets…”

Emma reclined in her seat and continued to fan herself as the fire warmed the room. Bolivar kept droning on about his new plans, and she waited for the appropriate moment to confirm that she would continue to fund his creations, as long as he upheld his own promises in turn.

The sorts of games they had to play indeed…

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Kavita sighed and rolled her head and shoulders, eliciting a small pop. She had been working all day, three hours past when she was supposed to clock out, for the fifth day that week. She didn’t care enough to stop, though. She had heard comments about how she was “married to her work” too many times to remember, and at this point in her life she just tuned them out. 

Part of the reason for her increased workload as of late was the fact that one of Alchemax’s other, smaller locations had been attacked. She knew that her own lab wasn’t as likely to be targeted, at least logically speaking, but the small irrational part of her mind told her to fret over the possibility that her life’s work could be destroyed overnight. Much to her chagrin, she was once again letting that irrational portion of herself override her need for sleep and food. A fact that her body decided to lodge a complaint about with a low and prolonged growl. 

She pulled out her phone and checked the time. It was nearly ten at night, and she still had yet to eat dinner. She could always order takeout to the front gate; an idea that she was considering with a great deal of preference. She could really go for some pad thai, and she knew there was a place that was still open, and still delivering, this late at night. She licked her lips and placed a call.

As she took care of her needy stomach, Kavita glanced upwards, towards one of the sentinels that was resting, recharging, in the corner of the room. She had grown used to having them around, but that didn’t make her like them any more. She had a great distaste for violence. She always had. Her mother told her when she was young that everything in life could be solved through peaceful means, and Kavita wanted nothing more than to prove her right. Mutants, as a people, did not offend her. But so long as they were going to cause mass destruction, as they were wont to do, she would work towards a way to remove those violent capabilities via medicine. 

A cure for mutation. It was her life’s dream, to create such a thing. Now, after forty years, she was closer than ever to discovering it. She just needed to connect a few more dots, run a few more trials, and it would be complete. By her estimates, which she had happily informed her superiors of, the cure would be completed within a year. So long as she kept receiving the proper funding, of course. These sorts of experiments didn’t come cheap, and they never would. At least, not within her lifetime. 

A thin smile stretched across her face as the glow of her computer reflected off of her glasses. Yes, she was close. Closer than ever before. She had a good feeling about these upcoming trials. A brief glance reminded her of the names of the new volunteers. Angelo Espinosa, Paige Guthrie and Trevor Hawkins. Her heart was practically swelling with pride. The fact that these three were willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of scientific advancement was proof that the next generation had their hearts in the right place. 

Suddenly, the sentinel in the corner snapped to attention, eyes glowing a powerful golden color, and a chill ran down Kavita’s spine. She dropped her phone, all thoughts of food vanishing as her stomach curdled. Perhaps the irrational part of her brain wasn’t quite so irrational after all.

**”MUTANTS IDENTIFIED. INITIATING APPREHENSION PROTOCOLS.”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia time! 
> 
> The only real things of note here are the three "volunteers" that Kavita looked at. The first two are Skin and Husk from the 90s Generation X comic, while the third is Eyeboy, from the 2010s version of Generation X. The only other thing I really have to say is that I just really love writing Emma Frost? Especially this version of her. She's both terrible and wonderful, at the exact same time. And I can promise that this isn't the last we'll see of Bolivar Trask either. He's going to be fairly important to this fic's plot. 
> 
> As always, please kudos and comment! I love hearing feedback!


	12. The Wheel's Still In Spin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Song: The Times They Are A Changin' by Bob Dylan
> 
> For fairly obvious reasons, once you finish the chapter.

Three sentinels. MkIIIs, if Nomi’s intel was to be believed. Four human security guards; two at the front gate and two inside the building itself. Motion sensors all around the perimeter, made from the same tech that allowed sentinels to identify Mutants. It wouldn’t be easy to get in. At least, not without a teleporter. 

Luckily for Scott, he had one of those, and she was _damn_ good.

Blink dropped them down in an old service tunnel, which Emma had oh so helpfully managed to provide photographic examples of to the elf-eared girl. Scott knew that the instant they set foot on the ground, it would only be a matter of time before the sentinels detected them, so they had to work fast. He had gone over the building’s schematics with Joanna and Remy, looking for the quickest, and safest, route to Dr. Rao’s personal laboratory. 

Joanna took point, while Remy split off to sneak through the building’s ventilation system. He vanished with a two fingered salute and a sly wink, managing somehow to remain utterly silent as he crawled through the cramped metal tunnel. 

“Let’s move quickly, team,” Scott said as they came out of the tunnel and into a side-hallway of the building. Rao’s lab was on the first floor, the same level as them. 

“Leave it to me, Bas,” Joanna said with a grin that made her look hungry as a wolf. She pulled her dreadlocks back and tied them into a ponytail, then crept along, crouching close to the floor, as she led the pack through the stark white hallways of Alchemax. 

They found the first security guard milling about in their neck of the woods. Scott raised a hand, signalling Angelica and Nomi to stop. Joanna dashed forward, brought herself up behind the man, and pulled him into a sleeper hold before he had so much as a chance to open his mouth in surprise. He struggled against her, wordlessly, for several long moments. The only sounds came from his shoes squeaking against the linoleum floors, and his hands slapping uselessly against the fabric of Joanna’s costume. 

She laid him down on the floor once he had passed out, and the group kept moving towards the front of the facility. 

They looped around the lab, making a brief detour at the security office, where Nomi smashed a filing cabinet into the second guard’s ribs, before a light tap from the back of Joanna’s hand knocked him unconscious. He’d be feeling worse for wear than the first one, but he’d consider himself lucky that they didn’t go any farther. All of them, save for Angelica, had killed before, and they weren’t opposed to doing it again if it came down to a human’s life or their own. 

But as Joanna led them away from the security office, they heard the first alarm sound. Faintly, in the direction of Doctor Rao’s lab, a sentinel’s synthesized voice could be heard. A chill ran down Angelica’s spine, while Joanna cracked her knuckles and Nomi bounced on the balls of her feet in preparation for the fight to come.

It was Gambit, of course, who had set it off. He dropped from a ceiling vent into the lab, landing with the lightest of sounds behind a row of computers and test tubes. He peered above the countertop, just in time to be caught in the sweeping gaze of a large, blank faced, violet colored sentinel. His heart dropped into his stomach, and a split second later it was announcing his existence to the whole facility; no doubt remotely alerting the other two sentinels to his presence as well. Remy ducked and rolled away just in time to dodge a steel tendril which smashed through the counter like it was plywood. 

He heard a woman, not any of the ones he knew, cry out against the sentinel; ordering it to stop destroying her work. Remy almost laughed. How ironic that the machine put in place to protect Rao had already done more to damage her research than Remy. But he could correct that, as well as fight off the mechanical monster that loomed overhead. 

Three cards were drawn from the deck in his coat pocket. He charged them up enough for each to blow a small crater in concrete, then flicked them at the sentinel as he leapt over another writhing tentacle. They detonated along the sentinel’s side, scorching and warping the metal of its right arm, while also tearing through another few rows of vials and various bits of research equipment. A large microscope, which looked expensive enough to fetch a hefty price if he were to pawn it, was regrettably blown to smithereens. 

He could always steal something else before they left. 

The sentinel, seemingly bored of sending its palm-tendrils after Remy, lurched forward and swung at him with the back of its fist. It caught him, but he caught it as well. He grabbed onto its uppermost finger and held on tight as it completed the followthrough. When it raised him up to its head and reached up with its other hand to grab him, he let go and fell back to the ground… Leaving behind a finger that was now glowing with kinetic energy. Energy that was just waiting to burst. 

Before he could break his back on the landing, Remy found himself caught out of the air like a flyball. He turned his head and grinned at the sight of Frenzy, Joanna, scowling as she skidded to a stop in the corner of the lab. 

The sentinel looked down at them and reached out with one hand, only for the other to explode, distracting it from its quarry for another few moments. It staggered, giving them an opportunity to slip under its legs and regroup with the others. 

“Magnetrix, let’s finish it off quickly,” Scott said, sounding almost as cold and methodical as the machine itself. He pressed the key on his wrist that split his skull-shaped helm down the middle and allowed his pent up optic blasts to pour out in a crimson stream of light. 

The beam of pure, solid force slammed into the sentinel with a scream, crumpling its face inwards as another force, one of pure, manipulated magnetism, tore its mechanical innards out through its midsection, which had been damaged, weakened, by Remy’s first attack. 

Within just a few moments of prolonged abuse, the sentinel fell onto its side, crushing what remained of the middle of the lab. All that was left were the computers, one of which doctor Kavita Rao was cowering behind at that very moment. Too frightened to attempt to flee through the doorway, which was being covered by a wall of heat that had been conjured up by Firestar. 

“Wh-what do you want from me?!” The doctor whimpered after Joanna pulled her out by her shirt collar and threw her down on her very own workstation. 

She looked thin, frail. Wiry in a way that told Scott she had never lifted a weight in her life. She wore thick glasses and had a slight overbite. The shirt she wore beneath her lab coat was wrinkled, and so too was her charcoal pencil skirt. She raised her arms in front of her face, defensively, and cowered in fear from the Mutant menace that bore down on her. She was all too _human_ , and that sad, disappointment of a fact made Scott shake his head at the unfortunate woman. 

Was this what they all were like, he wondered briefly, when you stripped away their veneer of hate? Frightened, messy children? 

She was breathing rapidly, raggedly, as her eyes flitted from figure to figure. But it always returned to Scott, and his shining silver visage, which reflected her terrified face back at her. 

“What we want, Doctor Rao, is to exist,” He said in a low, dangerous voice. “Your work will destroy us, and I, for one, cannot allow that to stand.”

“I-I don’t want to wipe Mutants out!” She stammered. She looked deep into his mask, and he tilted his head curiously before she continued. “Mutants are _fascinating_. I have no doubt that they could be a boon to scientific progress! For example, how does a healer heal? M-My theory is secretions from the skin! And if those secretions could be sampled, replicated, we could regrow lost limbs, o-or cure diseases!”

“Is that all we are to you?!” Joanna spat, seeing the smile that had slowly spread across the scientist’s face. “ _Freaks_ to be experimented on and studied?!”

“And _fixed_ ,” Nomi added with a sneer. 

Rao shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. The cure is only for Mutants whose abnormalities are too dangerous, to themselves or others. It would never be administered to a shapeshifter, or an amphibian, or anyone else who is harmless.”

“Do you really believe that?” Scott asked, seething slightly at the doctor’s claims. He clenched his fists in a white-knuckled grip and scowled beneath his expressionless mask. “You don’t expect ONE to inject every last Mutant they find? You don’t think sentinels will be loaded up with syringes like darts to be fired into a crowd? How blind _are_ you?”

He could see from the look on her face that she was quite blind indeed. She had the look of a woman who had never so much as considered the possible consequences of her actions, and that was perhaps the worst part of it all. Not active, purposeful malice. Simple, clueless stumbling about in the dark. He motioned for Joanna to release the woman, and after a brief but intense glare at the doctor, she complied; shoving her back onto the desk with a look of pure disgust. 

“We should wrap dis up, boss,” Remy muttered into his ear, bo staff balancing atop his shoulder blades. “Other two sentinels should be showin’ up soon.” 

Scott nodded, and looked to Nomi. “Wipe the computer,” He told her. With a bored expression and a wave of her hand, the deed was done. Rao looked at them, more horrified at what the teenager had done that anything before, mouth agape and eyes wide. 

“Y-You have no idea how much research you’ve just destroyed!” She cried out in anguish. Scott smirked beneath his mask. She had no idea. 

In an instant, his helm split open once more, and concussive force poured out in a tidal wave, smashing the remaining computers and assorted technology to useless junk. It cracked the floors, demolished the walls, splintered the light fixtures and reduced the room to nothing more than unlit rubble in under ten seconds. When he was done, and his mask had closed again, he turned his attention to the doctor one last time. 

“Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly aging,” He whispered to her, as his ruby eyes shone brightly in the newly cast darkness of the lab. “Get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand. Times are _changing_.”

“Wh-What…?” She blinked in confusion, a bewildered expression written across her face. “Are you… Quoting Bob Dylan at me?”

Scott scoffed. “You’re listening to the words, Doctor Rao, not the message; Your work has no place in the future. Find something new, or we’ll come for you again. Do you understand?”

She nodded, and he smiled coldly to himself. Angelica called in for an extraction from Blink, and by the time that the other sentinels found Kavita Rao, she was standing alone with her life’s work. Standing alone with nothing.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So, what’s next?” 

Scott turned his head to look at Joanna, sitting on the opposite end of the couch from him in the lounge. He was still wearing his costume, save for the helmet, which he had swapped out for his glasses not long after they returned home. The same applied to Joanna, who had shed only the arm guards, boots and knuckles that provided her attacks with an extra degree of force. A half-finished bottle of water hung from her fingertips by its neck, dangling just above the floor as she propped her head up on the fist of her opposite hand and watched him intently. 

“I have a few ideas,” He said after a long pause.

Joanna snorted derisively. “You mean _she_ has ideas.”

He raised an eyebrow, and she shook her head. They both knew full well who she was talking about. It was impossible not to. Still, Scott waited for Joanna to continue with her complaint, rather than pushing back against it before she had finished what she intended to say. He motioned for her to continue, and she did so gladly.

“We’ve been acting like her lapdogs ever since she set us up with this place. Springing that kid from jail was her idea, not yours. Same for all our other busts. But I saw the fire in you before. You picked us out by hand, without anyone’s input. Why aren’t you picking our targets?”

“Do _you_ want to get on a telepath’s bad side?”

“I’m serious,” She said with a slight growl. “Why the hell are we letting the Hellfire Club call the shots? We should be out there, right now, taking down the people who are hurting us the most.”

“We’d have gone after Kavita Rao regardless,” Scott pointed out. “Are you saying we shouldn’t have destroyed her research?”

She laughed, and put a hand to her head, peering at Scott through the gap in her fingers. “I’m telling you to give us a name, boy. And tomorrow, whether _her royal majesty_ wants us to or not, we’ll cross it off the list.”

“Bolivar Trask.”

Two words. One name. Yet that alone was enough to bring a dangerous smile to Joanna’s face. 

“Let’s get planning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, don't forget to kudos and comment!


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